Latest / Rise and Thrive with Dr. J. Nicole Podcast / Why Stress and Toxic Scripts Are Killing Your Libido and How to Rewire Them

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Why Stress and Toxic Scripts Are Killing Your Libido and How to Rewire Them · Rise and Thrive with Dr. J. Nicole Podcast

• 0:18
  Good morning, good morning, and welcome back to another episode
• 0:20
  of Rise and Thrive with Doctor Jane Nicole, where we are rising
• 0:23
  in fame and thriving in purpose. And in honor of Valentine's Day,
• 0:27
  we have dedicated the entire month of February to love and
• 0:32
  we're pointing it the month of love.
• 0:34
  So this month you're going to hear from a couple different
• 0:39
  subject matter experts, if you wills, couples.
• 0:42
  And we're going to talk about different things as it relates
• 0:44
  to love and healthy relationship.
• 0:46
  Whether you're married, engaged, single, dating, wherever you
• 0:51
  are, we have something for you. Also, we want to hear from you.
• 0:55
  I am inviting you to send in any of your relationship questions,
• 0:59
  which will be broken down and processed here as we are
• 1:02
  recording. And I'm going to do my best to
• 1:06
  give you some healthy feedback that's going to help you to get
• 1:10
  the love you deserve and desire and even healing, because some
• 1:13
  of us do need healing to be able to go on to that next step and
• 1:16
  to be in the space to give and receive love.
• 1:20
  And so today I am joined again by the future doctor Jazlyn on
• 1:26
  North Cross. And so today is going to be a
• 1:28
  little bit different. Last time when she visited us
• 1:31
  and she spoke more about her doctoral journey.
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  But today you're going to hear from her and her area of
• 1:36
  expertise. She's a sex therapist, a social
• 1:39
  worker by training. And so today we're going to talk
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  a little bit about like stress and the impact that they have on
• 1:46
  desire and maybe some ways to rewire it.
• 1:49
  So this conversation reframes desire because it's an adaptive
• 1:54
  response and it's not just personal or relational failure.
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  Sometimes it is other things that are going on that our body
• 2:00
  is signaling us. So this is an opportunity for
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  you all to lean in with curiosity, to not judge
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  yourselves or your partners, but more than anything, just get
• 2:09
  more understanding of something that can happen to any of us.
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  So welcome back, Jazz. Thank you so much for having me
• 2:19
  back. It's always a joy to sit down
• 2:21
  and talk to you, and I'm so happy to talk about one of my
• 2:24
  favorite subjects, so I'm ready to.
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  Get in, talk about it well, tell people a little bit since this
• 2:29
  is your favorite subject. How did you get into being a sex
• 2:32
  therapist? Oh I love this question.
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  I started out, I just wanted to be a therapist down therapy
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  through social work. As you know, we have our
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  clinical side of our practice. And then one of my first
• 2:48
  supervisors actually at Howard alum really encouraged me to
• 2:53
  always, you know, we have to do our continuing education credits
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  And she always encouraged me to take trainings that were aligned
• 2:59
  with things I was just personally interested in.
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  So I was always interested in sexual health, human sexuality.
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  And I started taking trainings and just how to talk about sex
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  and therapy. I'm like with clients and just
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  different things around arousal and and desire.
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  And I was just like, this is so cool.
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  So I just learned about you can get specialized in sex therapy.
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  And this was a whole lane. I'm just, it's exciting.
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  Like we're, I feel like it's one of the things where, you know,
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  in our profession, we're always learning.
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  And then with human sexuality, I mean, it's just you're never,
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  even now I shy away. I'm like expertise.
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  I'm like, right, what does expert even mean?
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  Because there's just so much to learn.
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  So it's just I'm happy. To be here, I'm happy to have
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  you here. You're absolutely right.
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  Like it's impossible to know everything, right?
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  So I also think that this is one of those topics that a lot of
• 3:51
  people might stray away from. It happens to people, right,
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  where their desire changes or just really fluctuates and
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  society, you know, gives the messaging that it's a problem.
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  What's really happening? What might be impacting a
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  person's like level of desire or libido?
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  So I love that you started with looking at the societal
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  influences. I think it's something that we
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  don't always like, we not, we may not be consciously aware of,
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  but it does impact what we think sex is supposed to look like,
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  what we think our sexuality is supposed to look like.
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  So sometimes there's, you know, the fluctuations that you have
• 4:32
  are natural. The way that you have sex from
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  when you first start, maybe catch your sexual debut is not
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  going to be the same. You're going to have sex
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  throughout your life. Even in a relationship, you
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  know, you first get together, the way that you're having sex
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  with your partner is going to change.
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  And those fluctuations are expected and oftentimes they're
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  normal. But we don't get a lot of
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  representation about that. Like a lot of what you see in
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  the media discourse, whether it's film, TV, even porn, you
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  don't see the fluctuation. It just kind of tends to follow
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  just the script, if you will. And so it causes, you know, it
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  can cause a lot of personal distress for the individual, for
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  the relationship because there's just not a lot of education
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  there for folks, unfortunately. OK, thank you for that.
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  So can you talk a little bit more about the impact of chronic
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  stress, right. We live in a very fast-paced
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  society and a lot of us are stressed and don't know it.
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  If we're more married to our jobs, the things that are
• 5:34
  causing the stress, likely then we are our partners, right?
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  So what? What would you say the role of
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  chronic stress is? What that role is upon desire,
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  libido, and so on. Yeah.
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  So it's really good question. So when it comes to chronic
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  stress, chronic stress could be one of those things that
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  definitely bring desire down. And it's kind of hard.
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  It's kind of hard for some folks to move to a place of desire,
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  even to even to put their mind because desire really is a more
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  of a mental kind of state of mind.
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  Like arousal is where you talk about the physiological
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  differences, which is something I think is just the important
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  distinction. Sometimes people get that a
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  little confused. But when it comes to desire, if
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  you, you're kind of think about like your mental highway, if
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  it's bogged down with with stress, then it can get hard to
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  kind of get past that. You also think about like
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  identity. Some folks have different
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  identities are going to have different types of stressors.
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  So when I'm in work, I get really curious about the sources
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  of those stress. And then if it's if the person
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  is in a relationship, whether that's it pure leaves a sexual
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  relationship or monogamous intimate relationship, like
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  whatever the case is, I'm really curious to know in these
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  relational systems, how is that system dealing with the stress?
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  So like a way, I guess a more simple way of saying it is like
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  when you're stressed out, are you able to come talk to the
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  person you're having sex with? Can you talk to them about these
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  stressors? Does that seem to address
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  alleviate? Do you feel seen?
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  Do you feel heard? Or do you feel like you can't
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  even talk to this person? That doesn't, it doesn't produce
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  a useful results. So maybe you're holding it in,
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  maybe you're talking to someone else on the sides.
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  I just get really curious about what are we doing with the
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  stress? Because stress is a part of
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  life, you know, unfortunately, to some degree, you're going to
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  have to be able to manage the stress as well as your sexual
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  needs. So I just get super curious
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  about what are we doing with the stress and all those feelings
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  are related to me. So can you talk a little bit
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  more about the impact of the partner, whether they're person
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  that it's safe to talk with versus not and how that might
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  impact desire? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  So there's say for example, it's someone that you can talk to and
• 7:51
  you feel for folks that are feeling seen, like I said, they
• 7:54
  feel heard, they feel valued, they feel like they can trust.
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  There's emotional trust and safety in their relationship.
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  And typically you'll expect some desire or to support desire.
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  Now, of course there are, you know, like genetic and
• 8:07
  biological and sex differences. So I certainly don't want to.
• 8:10
  Yeah, I don't want to make it seem like this like a blanket
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  statement for everyone. But generally speaking, if
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  you're, if the person that you're having sexual
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  relationships with is also a good support in other areas,
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  then that would support desire. Whereas if you're not getting
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  that, if you feel belittled, if you feel like this person is
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  draining or I can't talk to this person about the stressor,
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  they're invalidating me or there's a lot of confusion when
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  I try to bring up these stressors, then you may find
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  that you're not as motivated to feel a desire or sexual interest
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  with that person because there is this, what is it called?
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  It's like a incentives, like desire works with incentives,
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  and if there's no incentive, then that desire.
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  Desire for what? Like, not to be crass, but it is
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  kind of. Thing walk us through what it
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  looked like, what what good incentives look like that would
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  yield itself to increase desire arousal.
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  I love that that is so personal, like, not personal like, oh
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  girl, don't ask me that question, but I mean personal to
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  the purse, to the, to the, to the human in the relationship,
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  right. So that question is very
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  curious, is very open and it's something that I invite people
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  to start to explore for themselves.
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  Like what makes the sex good for you?
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  Because if we can identify that, then you can kind of work
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  backwards and figure out, OK, then how do you increase this
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  desire? Because desire doesn't just
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  spontaneously occur. So as I mentioned earlier, a lot
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  of the media scripting around sex will have folks thinking
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  it's just supposed to be the spontaneous like spark that just
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  happens. Now that is the case for some
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  people and there's different types of desire systems.
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  So some people what we call more spontaneous, where they may not
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  need a ton of gas, if you will, to get to get there, to get
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  their desire flowing, whereas other people, no, no, not.
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  And then for a lot of people fall into this category where
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  they're a little more responsive.
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  So I'm always encouraging like what makes it good for you?
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  And we figure that out, then we can we can start talking about
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  how to increase that desire. All right, so without getting
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  too sciency or technical, right, can we talk about like what's
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  happening in the nervous system and like when we're we're stuck
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  in survival mode and how that might because we're talking to
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  the people who are high achieving, they want a lot of
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  life, they're very educated, very successful, they, if you
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  follow it, hard working people, any number of those categories.
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  And it doesn't mean that it you have to have a certain level of
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  education to fall into this category.
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  These are people who care very much about the work that they
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  do. And even for some, their
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  identity might be tied to what they do in their output.
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  And so when they're stressed in either one of those home fronts
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  or the work front, what that does in trying, especially if
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  both are a little shaky, right, and they feel like they're in
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  survival mode, trying to hold everything together, what's
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  happening at that time in the nervous system?
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  So many things. Before I get into my answer, I
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  want to make sure I understand the last piece of what you said.
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  Are you thinking of situations where someone is high achiever
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  and are experiencing stress in multiple areas?
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  So maybe work maybe firmly got you.
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  And we're looking at where is the desire Got you, got you, got
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  you. OK, without getting too
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  scientifically, I love that. So when you talk about stress
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  could be something that's going to drive down your desire and I
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  and I only put an asterisk next to could because then I think,
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  OK, well, what is your gender? What is your race like?
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  What is your relationship status?
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  So I don't want to do like a oh, if it's this, then it's that.
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  But at any rate, where you want to get at or where I where I
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  would start to think about is getting really curious to know
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  around what is a person's goal? Is there like a goal in mind?
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  Is it something that they're thinking maybe get a little
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  narrow on about what is a good sexual outcome?
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  So that's a lot of us that can get inside culture kind of what
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  are the expectations around that?
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  I get really curious too about if something goes unexpected
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  during a sexual experience. Maybe your body doesn't do what
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  you think it's going to do. Maybe their bodies aren't doing
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  what you expect them to do. How do you respond to this
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  unpredictable or or unexpected event?
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  I get curious. I get really curious about that
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  because understanding that helps me as a clinician understand,
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  start to start to understand what is happening here.
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  We've talked earlier too, about some of the social and cultural
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  messages around it. Sometimes people have, I don't
• 13:00
  say issues, but they may be interested or attracted to
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  things that they can't make sense of or they have like maybe
• 13:09
  a moral disconnect or moral. Sometimes they might call it
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  like a moral incongruence. So you're into something that
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  maybe there you may have got some negative religious
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  messaging around. I may have told you you
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  shouldn't be or you can't be into that.
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  There's I find when I hear that question, I find that I have
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  more questions, but it really we're we're we're fine people.
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  Land is where they're getting more clarity around those things
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  and then realizing that you get the power to make your own
• 13:38
  sexual identity that's aligned with your values.
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  It's so it, it, I, I try to move people more into like that way
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  of thinking and really trying to understand like what does it
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  mean for this to be good? Like do you win as sex?
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  Is this like something you're trying to achieve?
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  Like so kind of getting just trying to understand like like
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  what does that? Especially when we know that
• 14:00
  your sexual life is dynamic and it's it's not static.
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  So is your target always moving? Could that be what some of the
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  distress is? It's just more questions, more
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  exploration. Yes.
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  And I can hear your clinical brain going, you're like, I
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  don't have enough here to properly assess and give a full
• 14:18
  answer, right? So like, I mean, it could have
• 14:21
  been fun to like, but this might have sounded too much too
• 14:24
  academic to have a example. Or as we were saying, like I've
• 14:27
  been yet to to accompany this, like the sad person, right?
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  Like and what their life looks like to paint a picture.
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  I can tell you though, I can tell you this even with the
• 14:39
  limited information that we have, because this is, you know,
• 14:42
  I appreciate, I appreciate the example and then somewhat of a
• 14:45
  vignette. But with the what I could say is
• 14:46
  that the the way that you lay it out, it definitely sounds like
• 14:49
  the stress performance anxiety could definitely be at play.
• 14:54
  A lot of sexual related dysfunction issues.
• 14:57
  Oftentimes there's some relation to anxiety in some way.
• 15:00
  So that knowing that is where I start to get into like the
• 15:04
  expectations around things like I've worked clients where you
• 15:08
  know, someone's penis doesn't maintain their erection or
• 15:12
  someone's vulva isn't lubricated to to that in a way that you
• 15:17
  know where it feels pleasurable. Are you, are you able to speak
• 15:21
  like for a lot of black women, they will not, they won't speak
• 15:26
  out and acknowledge their own sexual pain and discomfort.
• 15:28
  So that can also add to more of those stressors you're talking
• 15:31
  about. Certainly if your expectation of
• 15:33
  yourself is that you're supposed to be hot and ready and sexy and
• 15:36
  fine and all this with like, but there's no education around
• 15:40
  like, OK, then what happens if for whatever reason, like your,
• 15:43
  your body, which is fine, there's nothing wrong with your
• 15:45
  body, It's just doing natural body things.
• 15:47
  Do we have the language? Do we have the like what, Or
• 15:50
  does it come down to like negative judgement on yourself,
• 15:54
  like inadequacy and especially for like someone that's high
• 15:57
  achieving and is used to getting success?
• 16:00
  You can't control. We, we are limited in our
• 16:02
  ability to control what our body is going to do.
• 16:04
  You know, it can, you know, so I, I don't want to talk around.
• 16:09
  So I'm not trying to do the clinical talk around thing, but
• 16:11
  it is it just you know me, girl, I got to have a whole bunch more
• 16:15
  questions before I. Yeah.
• 16:19
  I mean, there's, there's so much in there because what I'm also
• 16:21
  hearing is that a very intimate thing is happening, but then one
• 16:28
  might not be safe within themselves depending on the type
• 16:31
  of thoughts that they have and then the reaction of their
• 16:34
  partner. So that's like double safety
• 16:38
  concern. So how can you be present?
• 16:40
  And we know that the body keeps score.
• 16:43
  The body will react a lot of times before we've registered up
• 16:46
  here and can label it. Can I say something about that
• 16:55
  though? What you're getting at too also
• 16:59
  can come down to like sexual shame for some people.
• 17:05
  So depending on you know, someone's history there.
• 17:10
  How do I say this? You're you can have like they
• 17:15
  call it like arousal, non discordance is what what it's
• 17:18
  called. So as I mentioned earlier,
• 17:19
  arousal is physical, right? So arousal is like an erection
• 17:23
  is, is lubrication and your body become, can become aroused
• 17:28
  without feeling that desire like that, that, that desire.
• 17:32
  So so you know, the old school way of thinking was like from
• 17:34
  like Freud, like, oh, there's these sexual drives and it's
• 17:37
  just this biological thing when the body does this is just, but
• 17:40
  we've advanced and we understand that there can be this, this
• 17:46
  non, non concordance. Excuse me.
• 17:48
  So attaching that to shame. There are times where people
• 17:52
  have experienced sexual trauma where their body, the thing that
• 17:56
  bodies are wired to do, but that did not mean that they wanted
• 17:59
  that. So when it comes down to like,
• 18:01
  you know, if someone has moved past that event and now they're
• 18:04
  in a new relationship, but they're wiring to your point,
• 18:07
  body keeping the score, like the body, they may also still be in
• 18:11
  that space of like, you know, just because my body does this
• 18:14
  doesn't mean I really want this. My body has done this and now
• 18:16
  there's some shame around that. So just it's always, and then to
• 18:19
  your point, if you are not in a space where you have like, you
• 18:23
  know, addressed that with yourself, you're in a really
• 18:25
  difficult spot to be able to talk about that with a partner.
• 18:28
  And and then for the partner who may not know, I've, I've
• 18:32
  certainly seen that before where I've had clients who have
• 18:35
  partners who have some type, type of trauma that they, you
• 18:39
  know, they may not know. And this is certainly isn't
• 18:41
  blaming, but they may not know all, but you can see the signs.
• 18:43
  So it is very, it could be really make it sound like so
• 18:47
  challenging, like there's no hope, because I certainly
• 18:49
  believe, you know, there's hope, there's healing.
• 18:51
  There's ways that and then we've seen it, seen it happen
• 18:54
  personally, professionally, but it's something to be aware of
• 18:58
  though certainly if you're if you're questioning your own
• 19:01
  sexual desire fluctuations or if you're trying to help somebody
• 19:05
  who might be. Like so like what would help you
• 19:07
  look like for the individual, the environment they're in, and
• 19:10
  what would it look like in the relationship?
• 19:13
  So the things that I would track with healthy certainly around
• 19:17
  consent, but being like consent isn't is a little bit.
• 19:22
  Consent is not as always as simple as yes and no.
• 19:26
  Sometimes people will engage in unwanted sex and maybe they feel
• 19:32
  out of obligation and I'm not here to judge.
• 19:36
  I definitely promote enthusiastic consent and I
• 19:39
  encourage folks to lean into their yeses and honor their Nos.
• 19:43
  So the healthiness of, you know, understanding your know and
• 19:48
  being OK with your know and feeling that as an individual,
• 19:53
  your know doesn't become like, now you're an issue.
• 19:56
  Like if you don't have the desire, you're not the issue.
• 20:00
  Like we can examine and try to understand maybe what what's
• 20:03
  going on with the desire, but you're not the issue.
• 20:06
  And if we frame it that way, then we erase like the I guess
• 20:11
  the experiences of folks that fall on the asexual spectrum.
• 20:14
  So like not having desire is not automatically a problem, right?
• 20:18
  So I would say, like I said, one, the consent, the respect to
• 20:23
  feel that you are empowered to have the kind of sexual
• 20:25
  experiences that you want to have and not feel coerced or
• 20:30
  pressure to engage in things that you don't want to do.
• 20:33
  So I think that would track through all three.
• 20:36
  Also being able to recover. Like I'm a promote, I promote
• 20:39
  like openness, like if you're, if you're interested in
• 20:41
  something, try it and and if you don't like it, you don't have to
• 20:45
  do it again. It's just, you know, like in
• 20:47
  that I, I know it sounds kind of simple, but sometimes folks are
• 20:51
  afraid to try things because of what that might mean about their
• 20:54
  identity, what that might mean about their sexuality.
• 20:57
  And, you know, I'm always curious to explore that with
• 21:01
  folks because, you know, is that if you're good with staying in
• 21:06
  your lane, then you're good. I'm not here to tell you get out
• 21:08
  of your lane. But if you're only in your lane
• 21:10
  because you're afraid of the other or you're afraid of what
• 21:12
  that might mean, then it's we might be able to play with that
• 21:16
  because how, how, how did you, to what degree will fear, do you
• 21:20
  want fear to control or dominate your sexual experiences and your
• 21:23
  sexuality and your sexual life? Especially if I'm thinking about
• 21:27
  this as like liberation, liberatory practices, then it's
• 21:29
  kind of tricky to be like, OK, are we fully feeling liberated?
• 21:32
  Are we really feeling embodied if we are letting fear and
• 21:36
  concern what others might think or what this might mean?
• 21:39
  You know? So yeah, I love this question.
• 21:41
  Do you have thoughts about that? Yeah.
• 21:44
  So I was just thinking to one, a person's own views about sex and
• 21:49
  like what the framework, the foundations are, what lessons or
• 21:52
  what, what definitions and judgments did they hear growing
• 21:58
  up from their environment, society and all of that.
• 22:00
  That frames things, right? Because there's so many things
• 22:03
  that I when I think back as a kid, I was like, why were what
• 22:07
  adults were talking like this for these conversations to be
• 22:11
  had? Just I just think about like
• 22:15
  formative years, like early, early and people were saying
• 22:20
  things already. You know what I mean about sex.
• 22:23
  Yeah, fears and some of them because I'm like, I know I was
• 22:27
  more definitely a little more sheltered, but some people it
• 22:31
  was just like, huh, like what are y'all even talking about?
• 22:37
  Whether it was advanced for our age or it was demeaning towards
• 22:43
  women, hate speech, all of those types of things, right?
• 22:48
  And just the judgement that's automatically there.
• 22:51
  Something that was designed to be so beautiful, so intimate,
• 22:56
  right? There's so much around it.
• 23:01
  There's so much around it. And it is even when I grew up, I
• 23:04
  grew up when I guess you would say a version of the sexual
• 23:08
  revolution was happening. We had salt and pepper.
• 23:11
  Let's talk about sex. You have Madonna doing her
• 23:14
  thing. And so these are all images I'm
• 23:17
  seeing and all the Miss Independent black woman, Adina
• 23:23
  Howard, you know? You know, the messages, OK, I
• 23:30
  love that you're saying this because things are coming up in
• 23:32
  my mind around quickly around black girls, the messages that
• 23:36
  we get and how a lot of those messages are mixed because
• 23:39
  you're right. You get these images of what
• 23:42
  black sexuality looks like. Oftentimes the media, music,
• 23:48
  well, music is a form of media. You also get messages from your
• 23:50
  family. You get messages from if you're
• 23:53
  affiliated with a church or religious institutions.
• 23:56
  Often times we are getting these mixed messages starting when
• 24:01
  we're younger and then they carry.
• 24:04
  We continue to get messages throughout life while you're
• 24:07
  going through your whole sexual development and then getting
• 24:11
  messages that are just like, which way do I, which way do I
• 24:13
  go? Like everyone who socialized as
• 24:15
  a girl is supposed to keep the goodies to herself.
• 24:17
  People are socialized as boys are supposed to go.
• 24:19
  Out and do not alive because somebody's got to be given the
• 24:22
  goodies for the boys to get. Right.
• 24:26
  Doesn't align. And then when you think about
• 24:28
  what that looks like in relationships, like people start
• 24:32
  to follow certain scripts. OK, well, think about if there's
• 24:36
  a relationship where there's like a discrepancy desire,
• 24:39
  right? So one person wants it more the
• 24:41
  other person than the other person.
• 24:43
  That puts people in a situation where the person who wants it
• 24:46
  more, many times is the guy. The same me coming down on the
• 24:49
  mend. It's just this is the data that
• 24:51
  we have, but also with the scripts, how folks are normal,
• 24:53
  how folks are socialized. Often times it's in a
• 24:55
  heterosexual relationship. Often times it's the guy.
• 24:59
  I guess I should have the masculine person.
• 25:01
  Then the other side that makes this the person that's the guy
• 25:05
  has always like ass. So they have to put themselves
• 25:07
  out there to be vulnerable to say like, will you give me this
• 25:11
  affection? Will, will I, can I get access
• 25:14
  to sex today? But then the other person, now
• 25:16
  whether they want the power or not, they have the power to
• 25:18
  like, I'm the arbiter of sex. Like I either say yes and then I
• 25:22
  do it or no. And now we like don't do it
• 25:24
  like. And for a lot of people in that
• 25:25
  position, they don't want that power.
• 25:27
  Like a lot of the people that I talk to, they don't want to be
• 25:30
  the one that says thumbs up or thumbs down.
• 25:33
  But oftentimes the other one doesn't want to be the person
• 25:35
  that says, please, please can I have some more?
• 25:37
  Like nobody really likes, I'm not going to be silly or
• 25:41
  offensive, but I see it a lot. I see it like that ain't help
• 25:46
  and desire either where it's just like how do we get.
• 25:49
  Nobody wants to be rejected, whether you're more of the, you
• 25:53
  know, program to accept the invitation to engage or you're
• 26:00
  the person you know, initiated it.
• 26:02
  So it's there's, there's so much that's in there.
• 26:05
  But that's why it's important to talk, talk about those things in
• 26:10
  the beginning before it gets too deep.
• 26:12
  Because then like in the beginning, let's be honest, when
• 26:15
  people are dating in the, in the beginning, people will spill
• 26:18
  their soul too. These people are much more open
• 26:23
  in the beginning. They will ask, they will answer,
• 26:27
  excuse me, the higher questions because at that point they want
• 26:31
  to be liked. They don't have much to lose
• 26:35
  either. So they're more likely to be the
• 26:38
  most vulnerable in the beginning before they feel like, oh, I
• 26:42
  don't want to lose them. So let me just, yeah.
• 26:46
  Totally. Well, it's that new relationship
• 26:49
  energy. So there's a lot of activities
• 26:51
  around like they're going to bond and kind of make the
• 26:53
  connection solid. And then as time goes on that
• 26:57
  you feel like I got, I got, I got my booth, we we locked in.
• 27:00
  We, you know, but as we said earlier, the way that your body
• 27:03
  is experiencing desire because your body is wired for pleasure.
• 27:08
  Bodies are wired for pleasure. It's just kind of on us to
• 27:10
  investigate and figure out like, oh, what feels good, you know,
• 27:13
  so we know that's going to evolve.
• 27:15
  So the connection we made in that new relationship energy
• 27:18
  stage, it's not like a set it and forget it.
• 27:21
  You have to like you talk about it, but these are ongoing
• 27:24
  conversations and kind of having it in your relationships where
• 27:27
  it's kind of the normal thing we do like we we, we we can chat
• 27:32
  about sex. We're not the kind of folks that
• 27:35
  have sex and then we never talk about it like it's, I encourage
• 27:39
  people like just chat about it. It doesn't have to be the same
• 27:42
  way all the time. It certainly doesn't have to be
• 27:44
  like an assessment or an evaluation.
• 27:46
  You know, it could be collaborative, interesting, fun,
• 27:49
  exciting. I I definitely try to frame it
• 27:52
  that way and support people with having that guy having those
• 27:55
  discussions in that way. Not to bash the media, but we
• 28:00
  don't see a lot of that. Like a lot of people are
• 28:02
  learning how to have sex from porn, like just straight up and
• 28:06
  there's no conversation. There's no, there's often times
• 28:11
  there's no like, hey, how that feel, how that feel?
• 28:14
  Or do you like or adjusting like the adjustments that they make
• 28:17
  in those in that form of media. That's like as a viewer, the
• 28:21
  audience doesn't see that. Like the production crew, the
• 28:24
  porn performers, all that. They do that off scene and then
• 28:27
  they create this package. So I'm not saying porn is bad.
• 28:30
  Like I'm not that therapist that tells you it's bad.
• 28:33
  If that's your belief, I'm not going to tell you not to believe
• 28:35
  that. But we have to be real about
• 28:37
  this as a package product and you have to, you have, you can't
• 28:41
  base your expectations on like for yourself or for your partner
• 28:44
  or what you're seeing on your TV or computer screen.
• 28:48
  You just, it's just, you're going to set yourself up.
• 28:50
  Yeah. And something that I heard
• 28:52
  someone say about the impact of the keyword and relationships is
• 28:57
  that there's never any rejection for men.
• 29:02
  And so it can build this false sense of entitlement and even
• 29:07
  the way that they go about it, I guess, depending on the type
• 29:11
  you're watching, right, Consuming, right?
• 29:14
  And it changes the brain. So right, that's my only concern
• 29:18
  with with it is watching it and not realizing how it's shaping
• 29:23
  every wiring, the way that we view intimacy in the way that we
• 29:26
  view sex. And some of it could easily veer
• 29:31
  on the side of unhealthy. Yeah, definitely.
• 29:36
  What's being depending because OK, so there's aren't a big.
• 29:41
  Right, that's what type. They are opinion totally because
• 29:46
  they're ethical black centered like I don't know the proper
• 29:50
  term, companies, producers, organizations, whatever the
• 29:53
  appropriate term is. So I definitely, we're speaking
• 29:56
  broadly now from a broad sense, the majority of the stuff out
• 30:00
  there is created for the straight white male gaze.
• 30:04
  So like if you're looking for something and you find it
• 30:08
  arousing, desirable, whatever, like I said, ain't here to
• 30:11
  judge, but it is important to be aware, like just conscious about
• 30:15
  like is this is what I'm seeing? Is that pleasurable?
• 30:19
  Like who is that pleasurable for?
• 30:21
  Like who? Who's really getting something
• 30:22
  out of this? And how much of that do you want
• 30:24
  to bring into like your bedroom? It's it's like something just to
• 30:29
  just to consider to your point too, about like you don't see
• 30:33
  the rejection of the man. You don't, you don't see, you
• 30:36
  don't see that. You don't see women in that even
• 30:39
  operating in that way to tell, to tell them no or not like that
• 30:43
  or slow it down or grab the Lube or I'm getting a cramp.
• 30:47
  Like, you know, things that actually happen in real life.
• 30:51
  These are things that happen. It happens.
• 30:54
  Bodies do what bodies do. This feels real good.
• 30:57
  We need to grab the pillow. Let this is sexual communicate,
• 31:00
  baby, hold on. Grab, grab the wedge.
• 31:02
  You hedge it right there, there. We it's teamwork.
• 31:08
  It's teamwork, but we don't see that.
• 31:10
  Like we don't, we don't see that scripted.
• 31:14
  So then when people are experiencing it in the real
• 31:16
  world, a lot of times it's that panic of it's, it's like it's me
• 31:20
  or I got to grin through. I just got to grit through this
• 31:21
  and bear this. Oh, it feels kind of good.
• 31:23
  It's just, it's just don't, no matter that my leg is cramped up
• 31:27
  and you know, I'm saying I could bring humor into it, but a lot
• 31:30
  of times that is people's experience.
• 31:32
  Of course, I even hear myself talk and I feel like I'm
• 31:35
  speaking very much, of course, from my perspective.
• 31:37
  So for our other listeners, you know, different identities, I'm
• 31:41
  certainly not trying to erase it.
• 31:44
  I just want to, you know, I want to be respectful for that
• 31:46
  because I'm like, you know, my, I'm feeling this off of that.
• 31:48
  But other people's bodies be doing things too.
• 31:50
  I can only feel with my body. Really and truly, I believe that
• 31:53
  like desire, it starts with safety, like do I feel safe with
• 31:59
  this person? And it can start, it starts well
• 32:01
  before we get into the bedroom. It starts with that consistency
• 32:05
  before, right? Like are you doing what you say
• 32:08
  you're going to do like actions and words aligning, right?
• 32:12
  Like are you a regular presence in my life?
• 32:15
  Are you here pouring in or you just kind of here to take and
• 32:18
  just like on a mission, you know, I mean, so all of those
• 32:21
  things that you do have to pay attention to what you feel while
• 32:28
  you're with a person. If you're not at ease, that's
• 32:32
  probably not somebody you want to keep moving with or you want
• 32:36
  to take more time to connect with them, right?
• 32:41
  So I, I really do think that that's important.
• 32:44
  And I know for me, emotional safety is hugely important.
• 32:49
  Like to that or I, I will shut down.
• 32:54
  And I've been in the past where I didn't realize that that was
• 32:58
  what what had happened that I had shut down.
• 33:02
  So context, right? You're how do I even say this?
• 33:10
  Context always matters for folks that have that desire.
• 33:14
  Like you know that your fire is going to get lit when you feel
• 33:19
  that emotional connection, then that is always it's important to
• 33:23
  keep an eye on that because if you, if someone, if that's the
• 33:26
  thing, like if you think about like there's gas that you need
• 33:29
  and there's other things that are brakes, right?
• 33:31
  So if your gas is emotional connection and a brake may feel
• 33:36
  like disconnection in the relationship by we're too, we
• 33:39
  have not talked like you. We we haven't connected in a
• 33:43
  meaningful way. I'm not into it.
• 33:46
  So for some people, when that's the case, especially my busy, my
• 33:50
  busy client, then we start talking, I start thinking and
• 33:54
  helping them think about like buffering events or even
• 33:56
  activities, things that you might be able to do together
• 34:00
  that are made me feel intimate, but we're not.
• 34:02
  The focus here isn't on penetration or, or, or, you
• 34:06
  know, sexual intimacy. It could just be that we are
• 34:09
  going to, we're going to check, we're going to check in.
• 34:12
  I want to know about how your week was, how well, how, how was
• 34:15
  that project you've been working on?
• 34:16
  What's the progress on that? Anything I can do to support
• 34:18
  you? Like, you know what I'm saying,
• 34:20
  like let's check in for the sake of check, checking in.
• 34:25
  We remember if you talked about early in the relationship,
• 34:27
  people just do it so easy. All you want to do is lay up and
• 34:30
  talk to Yo Boo, But then life goes on.
• 34:33
  So we have to find those moments to kind of come in and talk
• 34:36
  because you in relation like folks are really happy in their
• 34:39
  relationships. They're chatting about a lot of
• 34:41
  things like they're they're not just chatting about problems.
• 34:43
  The majority of their interactions are about are are
• 34:47
  are are delightful, like, you know, not not trying to make it
• 34:49
  seem like they're not in real life, but like this is is my dog
• 34:52
  like I'm having fun and like this person doesn't make this
• 34:55
  person isn't joining me. So so if it feels like a drain,
• 35:00
  if every time you talk to your partner it's just like might be
• 35:03
  the issue with that, That might be why y'all have this.
• 35:06
  Desire. Issue and sometimes I it
• 35:10
  rightfully slow because there's there's, you know, one thing we
• 35:12
  know in relationships is there's going to be conflict like
• 35:15
  there's going to be there's going to be breakdown, there's
• 35:17
  going to be rupture that that's going to happen in every
• 35:20
  relationship. Intimate friendship,
• 35:23
  professional, familial like that is a normal occurrence.
• 35:27
  With that there's opportunities for repair and if the system is
• 35:31
  a rupture and repair and we can rupture and we can repair and
• 35:34
  our ruptures bring us closer and we can go deeper and we
• 35:37
  understand each other better. That gives a really nice
• 35:41
  foundation to start to look at intimacy, to go deeper with
• 35:45
  intimacy and and to try different things and even repair
• 35:48
  if if you know, life events happen, people have kids, people
• 35:51
  experience loss, people have health issues, people different
• 35:56
  kind of seasons. So like your, your desire can
• 35:58
  certainly be season related to different seasons and things.
• 36:01
  So if you're if you're, if there's enough safety and and
• 36:04
  trust in their relationship, it's certainly it may not be
• 36:07
  everything you need to to get, you know, to get your wheels to
• 36:11
  get things lined up sexually, but it certainly puts you in a
• 36:13
  good position. Like you you, you're in a better
• 36:15
  position for it if you feel emotional safety and connection.
• 36:19
  Yeah, that's so good. That's so good.
• 36:21
  And there's just so many other implications and that we've kind
• 36:25
  of hinted, hinted at that go with like race as well as
• 36:32
  gender, right? And what's masculine, what's
• 36:36
  feminine, what's acceptable behavior, the do's and don'ts.
• 36:39
  Am I this, if I do that or if I like that?
• 36:42
  All of these things that are associated with identity.
• 36:46
  And I think that's what makes it hard because it it doesn't have
• 36:49
  to be an identity thing. So what do you think makes
• 36:54
  people feel like they have to place a label on things or give
• 36:59
  it identity? You're only trying to figure
• 37:02
  out. To that question for real.
• 37:04
  No, you know, so the social worker in me, the social worker
• 37:11
  in me under oh, how do I even say this?
• 37:12
  No, that makes sense. Speaking from like a Western
• 37:18
  standpoint, which is the no, we, we love a system.
• 37:22
  We we love to categorize things. We love to be able to say the
• 37:26
  people that look like this belong over there.
• 37:30
  The other folks belong over here.
• 37:32
  I really think we have to at least be aware of that when we
• 37:38
  start to think about our own identities.
• 37:40
  There's a political aspect to to identity.
• 37:43
  So what does that mean for you if your identity shifts?
• 37:47
  But we know that the nature identity like it's not static
• 37:51
  like as most things in life, identity changes there and
• 37:55
  that's OK. I think that the maybe and this
• 37:59
  is oh, freestyle in here a little bit come back.
• 38:02
  There's a difference between that self and identity.
• 38:05
  So that, you know, as your identity changes and you're
• 38:09
  having the distress about it, I do start to wonder more about
• 38:12
  the relationship with yourself. Like, are you good with who you
• 38:15
  are? Because your identity can be
• 38:17
  shifted by outside forces. Like just straight up, like we,
• 38:20
  we are limited in our control of identity because identity is so
• 38:22
  much around perception. And like, you know, if one group
• 38:25
  is up, that group is up. If that group is down, that
• 38:27
  group is down. But we don't as individuals, we
• 38:29
  don't really get to choose who's up, who's down, who's in, who's
• 38:33
  out. Like there's, there are things
• 38:34
  that are way above us. So I, I just just hearing this
• 38:39
  question and thinking about it and like right now I'm like, oh,
• 38:41
  I think it's come back to. So if you go with you and you're
• 38:44
  not, you know, and we're talking about sex.
• 38:46
  So let me be clear. You're not violating other
• 38:48
  people's sexual boundaries. You're not violating consent
• 38:51
  because that's, that's not cool. But if you're respecting other
• 38:55
  people's body autonomy and other people's sexual agency, and
• 38:58
  you're also getting to enjoy your own autonomy and your own
• 39:02
  sexual agency and you can find peace with that, then I think
• 39:06
  you're we don't. I would, I would suggest that
• 39:09
  maybe the finding perfect identity group, It's just my
• 39:13
  opinion. It might not.
• 39:14
  I don't. Yeah.
• 39:14
  Because I mean, that's more pressure, right?
• 39:16
  That's more pressure that's placed on it.
• 39:19
  And So what I just got from that is that the real key to like
• 39:25
  intimacy and desire is a healthy relationship with self, healthy
• 39:29
  self concept, self worth, understanding your value.
• 39:34
  So that is not performative. You can actually feed present
• 39:37
  and in the impact of power dynamics that are there because
• 39:41
  if you come in feeling less than already, the way you've
• 39:45
  positioned yourself, what you're willing to do, are you going to
• 39:49
  express your boundaries? Are you going to allow them to
• 39:53
  be pushed and say nothing, right?
• 39:55
  So I think that's really, really important.
• 39:57
  And I love that you said that because if you're good with self
• 39:59
  and also value self, you can value someone else intimately
• 40:04
  because the person who doesn't value themselves are reckless
• 40:07
  with self. They're going to be reckless
• 40:08
  with you. A. 100 percent, 100%.
• 40:13
  Now think about for Black peoples throughout the diaspora,
• 40:19
  how healing, affirming, empowering that is to have
• 40:23
  sexual experiences where you were bodied with yourself, the
• 40:28
  person you're engaging with feels that way about them.
• 40:33
  You can experience that together and create a sexual life that
• 40:38
  you feel seen, you feel embodied, you feel safe, you
• 40:41
  feel powerful. You can experience pleasure free
• 40:45
  of shame, free of fear, free of judgement.
• 40:49
  But we cooking now. Now we're we're, we're you're.
• 40:52
  Right it's and you cooking with grease and I don't know what
• 40:56
  else you need all the seasoning the marinade you got it all you
• 41:03
  said now we're cooking yes, absolutely for real, but people
• 41:08
  don't understand that because so many people are outcome focused.
• 41:14
  The end. Yes, the big you know.
• 41:19
  Yeah. And fortunately, a lot of the
• 41:21
  sex stuff gets really penis centered too, which isn't like,
• 41:26
  which puts a lot of pressure on the penis, the person with the
• 41:29
  penis like like, So it's just, it's, if we can move it away
• 41:34
  from that, like an outcome and just, or even shift it to where
• 41:40
  the outcome is more around, maybe it's around closeness,
• 41:43
  maybe it's around safety. Maybe the outcome is to feel, to
• 41:46
  feel valued. Maybe the outcome is to feel
• 41:49
  liberated. You know, then then it doesn't,
• 41:51
  that doesn't mean you have to have an orgasm.
• 41:54
  That doesn't mean that you have to finish.
• 41:57
  Like, that doesn't mean that there's like something has to
• 42:00
  happen. You look like you're going to
• 42:01
  say something and I want to know what what you're thinking.
• 42:05
  And I think that maybe sometimes where the libido mismatch comes
• 42:09
  in a person's outcome, how they view sex, the purpose of sex.
• 42:14
  So if one is here for the experience and the other is
• 42:17
  there for the fireworks at the end, we have two different
• 42:21
  things. And so there's already a
• 42:23
  disconnect. And if that's not discussed,
• 42:26
  where it's like you can get that, but understand that this
• 42:29
  is what they need. So let's do what's needed for
• 42:32
  both parties, right? So that it's healthy.
• 42:35
  And so that's more, I think that's something I've never
• 42:38
  thought about even, you know, being married before.
• 42:40
  I never talked about like, what are your views on sex?
• 42:43
  What is the point of it? Like what is important to you?
• 42:46
  How did you learn about it? Like then ask all those
• 42:49
  questions. And that that would have
• 42:51
  probably told the both of us a lot about each other.
• 42:55
  I'm sure, I'm totally sure it's having and folks that come with
• 43:02
  that kind of curiosity and want like, you know, you want to get
• 43:05
  what you want to get, but you also like want your partner to
• 43:08
  get what they want to. Like the people that have that
• 43:10
  mentality, they take a more collaborative approach to
• 43:13
  intimacy. So like, if you don't have that,
• 43:16
  the risk is person who isn't maybe he wasn't feeling the
• 43:19
  desire or the person whose body maybe isn't doing the thing that
• 43:22
  it's quote quote supposed to do. That person may feel like like
• 43:26
  they may feel blame, they may feel shame.
• 43:27
  The other person may feel who's not in that position, they may
• 43:31
  feel frustrated, they may feel like resentful, like, you know,
• 43:34
  so now it becomes this power struggle about like when you're
• 43:37
  not doing it the way I need you to do it or however the flip to
• 43:42
  what you were describing, that's very collaborative.
• 43:45
  It's like we're we're going to get what we want to get out of
• 43:49
  our sex life by working together.
• 43:52
  And the people that are like, I can't remember, they call in the
• 43:54
  literature some there's some nerd term in the literature, but
• 43:56
  they're like sexual like Co Co producers or something like
• 44:01
  that, where it's just like, oh, they're just they're just super
• 44:05
  it's super academic. It's like it's like Co creators
• 44:09
  sexual Co some some academic term.
• 44:11
  But you know, essentially that's what they're getting at.
• 44:13
  Like having those kind of that curiosity that, you know, your
• 44:18
  pleasure matters just starting from a position of you get to
• 44:22
  have pleasure like you. It doesn't matter how, you know,
• 44:25
  race, your gender, your nationality, your, your, your
• 44:29
  ability, your, your, you know, physical abilities like you, you
• 44:32
  can have pleasure. You know, that's not something
• 44:33
  you have to earn. You know, you don't have to show
• 44:35
  that you're deserving of pleasure.
• 44:37
  Like you, your body was literally created.
• 44:41
  All of our bodies are wired for pleasure.
• 44:43
  So it's like, why would we, why would the creator wire us this
• 44:46
  way? If you then have to like show
• 44:47
  that you're like good enough to feel good, like you're born to
• 44:50
  feel good. So we, you know, we talked about
• 44:52
  creating certain contexts or environments that will
• 44:58
  facilitate those good feelings or whether that's emotional,
• 45:01
  physical, you know, things in the environment that you can
• 45:04
  work with your partner to create.
• 45:05
  So now it's like, oh, this is, this is a vibe.
• 45:08
  Like I feel, do we need to change the lighting?
• 45:10
  Maybe the lighting's too harsh. If you don't want to see, if,
• 45:12
  you know, if you don't want to be seen in that way, then we
• 45:15
  could just adjust the lighting. Like that's cool.
• 45:16
  Do you want to put on some music?
• 45:18
  Do you want to get maybe nice pajamas that make you feel
• 45:22
  really good? Do you want to put on some good
• 45:24
  Cologne or perfume? Like what is it?
• 45:26
  Because you you can add the sensuality quality into the
• 45:28
  experience, whatever that make you a playlist.
• 45:32
  If it's a partner, you and your partner can make you a little
• 45:34
  playlist. We can make it fun.
• 45:35
  What's saying you're what's saying your sexual your sexual
• 45:38
  toolkit? What are the things that you
• 45:39
  just need to have on hand that's.
• 45:40
  The work you're there to help them figure out that disconnect
• 45:44
  and, you know, assuming they're in a safe, loving, you know,
• 45:49
  committed relationship, if that's what they're doing, like,
• 45:51
  cuz that's, that's their business.
• 45:54
  That's a business. Business.
• 45:56
  But yeah, absolutely. Because again, that goes back to
• 46:00
  the thoughts and views on sex, where for some peoples like,
• 46:04
  well, if I seem like I know too much, then they're going to
• 46:07
  think XYZ about me. If I don't seem like I know
• 46:11
  enough, then they're going to think like there's the internal
• 46:14
  narrative, right? That's going on.
• 46:16
  But if you're talking about it and if you got doubts and that
• 46:19
  mean you need to talk about it and you might not yet be ready
• 46:24
  if you're having those types of doubts, but it could also be
• 46:27
  that, you know, some internal work is needed.
• 46:32
  That's what I'll say, yeah. Absolutely And yeah, no,
• 46:36
  absolutely. And I think I tend to talk about
• 46:39
  these things in relationships because I see a lot of couples.
• 46:42
  But you know, as a lot of these things people can do, you start
• 46:47
  to think about your sexual life, even if you're not partnered,
• 46:50
  even if you're not having sexual partners.
• 46:52
  We look at, you know, masturbation is a form of sexual
• 46:55
  pleasure. It's very safe.
• 46:57
  And for some people, they have shame.
• 46:59
  They have things around that where they don't feel like
• 47:01
  that's clean or they feel like that that's a sin.
• 47:03
  So there's, there's even spaces to explore around that if you
• 47:07
  are not partnered or maybe you have the desire for partnership,
• 47:12
  maybe you're in the in between and you maybe you're recognizing
• 47:15
  that you want to explore your pleasure, you want to learn more
• 47:17
  about your body. And this maturation certainly is
• 47:20
  it gives you, I don't know, I'm trying to sound too technical.
• 47:23
  It's a mechanism for that. My clients laugh when I start
• 47:25
  getting too technical. I just can't say it sometimes.
• 47:29
  But masturbation is is there for you.
• 47:31
  You know, the more you know about you, how your body's
• 47:33
  wired, then when you are in a partnered experience that can
• 47:38
  boost your confidence, like, you know, it feels good and you can
• 47:41
  help somebody with that gap because not, you know, the
• 47:44
  expectation that a new partner's just going to know your body.
• 47:46
  Like that's not a that's not a fair expectation that you're
• 47:48
  deserving A pleasurable experiences.
• 47:50
  So knowing your body is really helpful.
• 47:52
  You just. Connected something for me too
• 47:55
  as you were speaking how sometimes people have in their
• 47:58
  mind already what they think the experience should be, whether
• 48:03
  it's based on past things or something they've seen, but it's
• 48:06
  something that they consumed a lot of time or they just
• 48:10
  fantasize in their mind, which sometimes can be really unfair.
• 48:15
  And if you haven't voiced, this is what I like.
• 48:21
  It leaves the other person to try to guess and figure it out.
• 48:26
  It could even cause them anxiety and then even on how people
• 48:32
  communicate. And so just kind of tied it back
• 48:34
  to being like high stress, right?
• 48:37
  Like some people, their stress, they just want to get that
• 48:39
  relief, that release because all the things that happened in the
• 48:42
  body, the dopamine, the oxytocin, the endorphins, all of
• 48:46
  that that comes with this, you know, sexual and intimate
• 48:51
  account encounter. Some people are just trying to
• 48:54
  get to that, to feel better. And then in the process, they're
• 48:58
  making their, they didn't really connect with their partner
• 49:02
  because it wasn't about that. It wasn't about the partnership.
• 49:06
  It was about them getting that relief that they needed.
• 49:09
  And for some people they're like, OK, now I can think
• 49:12
  clearly or that just reset their day.
• 49:15
  Not saying that there's anything wrong with that, but I think
• 49:17
  it's important to like know your partner, communicate that with
• 49:20
  them and to not let that be the way that you cope because you
• 49:25
  still have to deal with the things because now your partner
• 49:28
  could become a tool because of high stress.
• 49:33
  The coping. Yeah, yeah, the coping part of
• 49:37
  that stands out to me. But we also see that sometimes
• 49:40
  with porn use where someone is using that to, you know, So it,
• 49:45
  you know, from a clinical standpoint, I would want to look
• 49:48
  at what's driving the behavior. Like if it's anxiety, for
• 49:50
  example, then we, you know, let's let's let's address the
• 49:53
  anxiety and then try to get more of those positive experiences,
• 49:58
  kind of just like offset it because, yeah, if someone is
• 50:01
  going down that track that it could, to your point, it could
• 50:04
  definitely the person, let me think the person that is
• 50:09
  impacted by that behavior because it could start to feel
• 50:11
  used. And and that is not going to be,
• 50:14
  you know, for a long term relationship satisfaction,
• 50:17
  sexual satisfaction, even that, you know, not the not the
• 50:22
  greatest spot for the relationship to be in.
• 50:25
  So yeah, it's a good example. I mean this it's it's really
• 50:29
  complicated, honestly. Like we that like intimacy and
• 50:33
  sex is simple. It is and it's not because
• 50:36
  there's all these things and communication is so important.
• 50:46
  You said something and no, girl, I'm I lost it.
• 50:49
  If it comes back, I'll come back around.
• 50:50
  It was something in that example.
• 50:51
  Sharon, we'll come back. Around OK, so I think we might
• 50:54
  need to do a little explanation of like what we mean just in
• 51:01
  case someone come into the conversation is not sure about
• 51:05
  the difference between desire, libido, arousal and attraction.
• 51:10
  How do you define those? You you don't have to get like
• 51:15
  textbookie, but like how do you define them?
• 51:18
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 51:22
  So I use desire and libido interchangeably.
• 51:27
  And with that it's really around the parent must use the word to
• 51:32
  describe the word. But it is, it's the interest to
• 51:35
  engage in sexual activity. A lot of times that is, you
• 51:37
  know, like a mental like I'm interested in this, I want to do
• 51:40
  this, I'm thinking about that. And that's your desire.
• 51:44
  Arousal is the physiological response.
• 51:47
  As we said before, you can have desire without arousal.
• 51:50
  You can have arousal without desire.
• 51:53
  And that you know, that's not a problem.
• 51:54
  Attraction, there's different ways that I think about
• 51:58
  attraction. So there's attraction to people
• 52:00
  like romantically you might be attracted to someone that you
• 52:04
  also might have more like a sexual or erotic kind of
• 52:07
  attraction. Sometimes people are attracted
• 52:10
  to maybe it's not necessarily like based on gender or like
• 52:15
  genitals. It could be that your desired or
• 52:17
  excuse me, attracted to maybe certain energy.
• 52:19
  So some people are attracted to like masculine energy.
• 52:22
  They may say I'm queer, I really like people that are masculine
• 52:25
  and that might be someone that falls on the trans spectrum,
• 52:27
  that could be a man, that could be a masculine presenting woman.
• 52:30
  Like that you might find yourself attracted to them.
• 52:33
  And then on the other side, people might be attracted to
• 52:35
  femininity where they're just attracted to feminine energy,
• 52:39
  attraction. It always, again, even that is
• 52:44
  very complex. And I think what was the last
• 52:46
  one you said? Attraction, desire.
• 52:48
  Desire, little bit of arousal, attraction.
• 52:50
  You got them. Hey, you did that.
• 52:52
  OK girl, I like that. OK.
• 52:54
  Because I just think that's also important because we just kind
• 52:56
  of like Dove right in. We showed it you mentioned too.
• 53:01
  I noticed you earlier. You're talking about fantasies.
• 53:04
  Fantasies or something else that are really interesting to
• 53:07
  explore. Sometimes you have fantasies
• 53:09
  that they just want to keep as a fantasy and the for them, the
• 53:12
  fantasy are really using your imagination kind of creativity
• 53:16
  to experience certain sexual interests in a way that's really
• 53:20
  safe and really affirming. So I think fantasies are really
• 53:25
  powerful and, and sometimes we have shame around their
• 53:27
  fantasies. So it's just even exploring
• 53:30
  that, you know, shame is man made.
• 53:32
  Your fantasy is your space fantasy could be really powerful
• 53:35
  for people that are queer, that are in a that are in monogamous
• 53:39
  relationships. Because if you're you're queer,
• 53:41
  you might be attracted to a variety of different bodies and,
• 53:46
  and people rather. And you might decide, you know,
• 53:48
  you're committed to this partner and this partner is cisgender or
• 53:52
  like wherever it is, they're just they are, they were not
• 53:55
  going to represent all of your attractions.
• 53:57
  So sometimes fantasy can be really important in in affirming
• 54:01
  of someone's identity. So I think we were mentioning
• 54:03
  fantasy earlier. I was like, oh but the fucking.
• 54:05
  I'm like this, even just having this conversation, I'm like
• 54:09
  unlocking some things up here too.
• 54:11
  Just like there's so much that like really is involved here and
• 54:17
  want to talk a little bit more about what you think might be
• 54:22
  some contributing factors to mismatched libidos.
• 54:27
  OK, so the first thing that comes to me would be around like
• 54:34
  scripting. Some things are just like, oh,
• 54:38
  let me focus on one. So some things can be scripting
• 54:40
  where backstack our socialization, we kind of
• 54:43
  sometimes fall into scripted behaviors.
• 54:47
  Someone mentioned to me earlier a couple days ago, they were
• 54:50
  like, I feel like people are performing roles a lot of times
• 54:54
  and social situations. You're just kind of like, you
• 54:56
  know, and a lot of you, you performance is kind of put on
• 55:01
  us. We talked about identity.
• 55:02
  People perceive you based on how you look.
• 55:05
  They're kind of going to you know, so we we show up kind of
• 55:08
  to act. We're all actors in in some way.
• 55:10
  So sometimes those like if you're scripted a certain way,
• 55:13
  then that could be a contributing factor for sure.
• 55:16
  Not to some some racist and some groups are hyper sexualized.
• 55:19
  So then people are also kind of that, that that could be be a
• 55:22
  factor that comes in. Also there's this concept in
• 55:26
  relationships, the Gottman's talk about this, where they talk
• 55:29
  about like turning, turning towards and turning from in
• 55:31
  relationships. So that can also be a factor
• 55:34
  where it's like, are we coming together to talk about this or
• 55:38
  do we turn? Is the issue now becoming
• 55:40
  between US? And now we're, we're, we have
• 55:43
  this, they have this discrepancy and we're disconnecting our
• 55:46
  relationship. So it's pushing us further away
• 55:48
  and making the gap wider as opposed to coming together.
• 55:51
  Stress for sure. As you mentioned earlier,
• 55:54
  professional financial stress can definitely, you know, and
• 55:59
  people respond differently to it.
• 56:00
  Like somebody, someone's stress may make them that you said are
• 56:03
  kind of like around that coping, which I would say isn't, I want
• 56:09
  to make it something as good or bad, like bad, like 100% bad.
• 56:11
  Like sometimes like, you know, some, some people use that as a
• 56:14
  healthy way to, to manage and just to kind of address things.
• 56:18
  I think it's important to know what, what that is though, and
• 56:20
  kind of and kind of track that. So in some relationships, I
• 56:23
  think that could be a factor too.
• 56:24
  It's just like we're handling our, we handle our stressors
• 56:27
  really differently or our stressors are handling us.
• 56:29
  And now, you know, one person might become hyper sexualized
• 56:32
  and that that can cause an issue for sure.
• 56:36
  That's what I got. She needs space too, right?
• 56:38
  She needs space too. So they met the academic you in
• 56:41
  the first episode. So today they get to see more of
• 56:44
  the other parts of you, right? So say people are in a
• 56:47
  relationship, they are committed to being with one another, but
• 56:50
  they're going through this stressful period of time and the
• 56:54
  libidos are mismatched and they want to get their desire back.
• 56:58
  What are some of the things that you would recommend for them?
• 57:05
  So talk a little bit about the impact of unequal emotional
• 57:09
  labor and mental bold and how that impacts relationships and
• 57:13
  desire. OK, this is a good one.
• 57:15
  This is a good one that must can lead to resent.
• 57:17
  Say that. Just yeah, yeah.
• 57:23
  So there's, you know, things that are going to support
• 57:26
  desire, definitely going to be friendship, right, Fondness,
• 57:29
  like having fun together, feeling like the person that
• 57:32
  you're having sex with. I think I think about this like
• 57:35
  long term relationship, right? Like we have fun, we are friends
• 57:40
  at the end of the day, we're on the same team.
• 57:43
  When you start to feel like that you you don't feel that way
• 57:45
  because you're like, every time there's an issue, I have to
• 57:48
  handle it every time that everyone's calling me looking
• 57:50
  for me to do this. I got to get the kids here, I
• 57:52
  got to get to work, I got to get food on the table.
• 57:54
  I got to do all these things. And now you're coming over here
• 57:56
  and you wanting something from me or you're expecting me to
• 58:00
  give you something like that. Could be, you know, not feeling
• 58:03
  appreciated, feeling undervalued, feeling like all
• 58:06
  all you want me to do is go work and provide.
• 58:09
  You see, I'm trying to be fair with our genders here.
• 58:12
  And then now to like give you something like that can also
• 58:15
  feel like people feel like they're being used.
• 58:18
  Feel. So the resentment, the
• 58:19
  resentment is not tied to a gender.
• 58:22
  Like there's not one gender that like owns that.
• 58:26
  Sure. Yeah.
• 58:27
  That's kind of that, that that can certainly affect desire back
• 58:33
  to just the power dynamics, like how is power moving through the
• 58:38
  relationship? Does one person have too much on
• 58:43
  their plate to where it feels like, you know, like kind of
• 58:45
  what I'm saying, like resentments don't get in the
• 58:49
  way. People are not going.
• 58:51
  We're not feeling turned on, We're not feeling aroused, we're
• 58:53
  not feeling cutesy. We're feeling upset, we're
• 58:56
  feeling bad. So those things can't.
• 58:59
  It's not going to. Yeah.
• 59:01
  And even sometimes that unequal low can change the relationship
• 59:05
  dynamics where instead of it being partner, it's like more
• 59:09
  parental in nature. Go ahead.
• 59:15
  OK, so let me tell you now, let me tell you that happens a lot
• 59:18
  in what I actually I was, I was reviewing some of my notes and
• 59:22
  things and different articles I've been reading for school,
• 59:24
  just preparing for our talk today.
• 59:27
  And one of the things that I saw was like in African American
• 59:31
  relationships, the folks that one of the studies I was looking
• 59:34
  at, folks that reported like high relationship satisfaction,
• 59:37
  their relationships are more egalitarian and they had a
• 59:40
  little more fluidity in terms of like gender roles and division
• 59:43
  of Labor and definitely were operating the couples that were
• 59:46
  operating from that more egalitarian or from egalitarian.
• 59:49
  Down for anyone who is unfamiliar with that
• 59:51
  terminology. Egalitarian.
• 59:55
  Totally. So egalitarian is going to be
• 59:58
  different than like that hierarchical where there's just
• 1:00:00
  like a strong leader and then people in the house are like
• 1:00:02
  subservient. So like, you know, typical kind
• 1:00:05
  of way you might look at it is like the man is the head and the
• 1:00:08
  house just falls on our strict patriarchal framework.
• 1:00:11
  Now one thing is these scholars did say is for.
• 1:00:14
  Black couples in this relationship, if that is the way
• 1:00:17
  that they both wanted their relationship to go then that was
• 1:00:20
  not an issue. Like so this isn't me saying
• 1:00:22
  like all relationship you know the man shit if you checked out
• 1:00:25
  when I said patriarchal come check back in.
• 1:00:28
  I'm not saying that's the problem.
• 1:00:29
  If you and yo Boo get down like that y'all are good.
• 1:00:32
  If someone in their relationship though, wants a different power
• 1:00:36
  structure, then then that's, you know, then then OK.
• 1:00:41
  But if both people in a relationship are like, I'm cool
• 1:00:44
  with doing, you know, if the masculine person relationship is
• 1:00:46
  cool with doing some things that are considered feminine, if the
• 1:00:48
  feminine person relationship is cool with doing some things that
• 1:00:51
  might be considered masculine, then we're falling more into
• 1:00:55
  this. There's a fluidity.
• 1:00:57
  The relationship isn't, there's not the structure hierarchical
• 1:01:00
  system where one person is kind of like it's their way or the
• 1:01:04
  highway kind of thinking. Is that is that making clear?
• 1:01:08
  I'm trying to make it clear. Yeah.
• 1:01:10
  OK. Yeah.
• 1:01:10
  So to your point or to your question about an equal kind of
• 1:01:14
  division of Labor and how how that might shift power in the
• 1:01:17
  relationship. And then what that could do with
• 1:01:19
  the desire in an arousal. I guess my like, my response to
• 1:01:22
  that is like you might then want to look at how do we, how do we
• 1:01:25
  nothing's ever going to be 5050, but how do we lighten the load?
• 1:01:29
  Like sometimes what that could look like?
• 1:01:32
  And I've seen this and sessions just let's get an inventory of
• 1:01:35
  all the things that that that need to be done.
• 1:01:38
  And then like where who can do these things?
• 1:01:40
  Sometimes clients, sometimes people have resources to be able
• 1:01:43
  to like maybe get a housekeeper to come in or maybe get maybe
• 1:01:46
  get some support around childcare or maybe get some
• 1:01:50
  support with like if it's the lawn duty or maintenance or
• 1:01:53
  maybe someone's doing certain things in a relationship, they
• 1:01:55
  actually don't have to get done, you know, maybe they're just
• 1:01:57
  over functioning, overproducing. So just kind of when people do
• 1:02:01
  kind of an inventory of like, where's all the energy going and
• 1:02:04
  having a real conversation about that in the context of like
• 1:02:08
  we're trying to lighten some loads here so that there's space
• 1:02:11
  to actually have fun. Because when we think about for
• 1:02:14
  me, when I'm talking about sex, sexual intimacy and desire, I'm
• 1:02:18
  thinking from this perspective of like pleasure and trying to
• 1:02:21
  understand how do I help the people get back to pleasure?
• 1:02:23
  How do I help people get or even get to pleasure?
• 1:02:25
  Because maybe maybe they've never even got to have
• 1:02:28
  pleasurable sexual experiences. So it's like what is healing and
• 1:02:31
  what does it look like to get people here to where they feel
• 1:02:34
  open, they feel pleasure, they feel safe.
• 1:02:37
  So like, do we need to do all these extra chores, all these
• 1:02:40
  extra tasks, all these extra things?
• 1:02:42
  Because I get curious about that.
• 1:02:44
  And I've seen, I've seen people shit like, oh, baby, like, you
• 1:02:46
  mean to tell me if we just budget a little bit more for
• 1:02:48
  this thing here or we outsource some of these things, now
• 1:02:52
  there's more space for us just to connect and we can increase
• 1:02:55
  our lot. Oh yeah, people.
• 1:02:57
  People will figure how to really chat.
• 1:03:01
  Then how can couples talk about desire, libido and all of that
• 1:03:06
  without blame or defensiveness? I love your question, I'm
• 1:03:11
  getting up. Give me one second because my
• 1:03:18
  soundboard give me one second. OK.
• 1:03:23
  I hear it now too. That's awful.
• 1:03:26
  One moment, please. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
• 1:03:31
  Girl, I'll be trying to be cute like I'm going somewhere I.
• 1:03:33
  Thought you were. I thought you were.
• 1:03:36
  I am on camera. I'll be right back.
• 1:03:39
  OK. And this right here is one of
• 1:03:41
  the reasons why I've not yet done a recording live for real,
• 1:03:46
  because I'm like, this board usually stays charged so long,
• 1:03:49
  and I think I took that for granted.
• 1:03:55
  Your setup is hard. Your setup is hard.
• 1:03:57
  Thank you. Girl I'm I'll be trying to
• 1:04:00
  figure it out and I'd be so wishy washy in my mind be 1 to
• 1:04:03
  change stuff. All part of the.
• 1:04:06
  I know. I think this is my third this
• 1:04:09
  topic or. Yeah, this one like girl, we
• 1:04:17
  just talking like we not in the classroom.
• 1:04:20
  Or you know how. It is wrong with thing.
• 1:04:23
  OK, let me try. I could use another adapter.
• 1:04:26
  All right. BRB.
• 1:04:29
  OK. Make sure it's connected.
• 1:04:30
  This sound is not it. Hold on.
• 1:04:33
  I gotta switch on settings. Jazz, can you hear me?
• 1:04:37
  I can hear you OK. This is not coming here.
• 1:04:40
  The board. Yeah, hold on.
• 1:04:42
  Let me I'm going to hit stop and then we are going to is this
• 1:04:50
  going to let me keep this together?
• 1:04:52
  Hold on, let me try one more thing settings taking its time.
• 1:04:58
  Yes, I appreciate your patience. Oh yeah, I apologize.
• 1:05:06
  They always talk. They always talk.
• 1:05:08
  Issues that happen. Issues that happen.
• 1:05:12
  Season. It happens, it happens all
• 1:05:19
  right. I don't know why this is moving
• 1:05:20
  so slow because I'm in the screen that I need to change
• 1:05:25
  where everything is going or not going because it's definitely
• 1:05:29
  not OK. I'll close this and see if it's
• 1:05:31
  going to do it again because what just happened let me see,
• 1:05:35
  but it definitely kicked me out. It sounds better now though.
• 1:05:41
  OK, right, so mission accomplished.
• 1:05:44
  But I was like, it literally just went to the screen and it
• 1:05:48
  was like sorry, can't something something, something.
• 1:05:50
  And I'm like, but it's still recording and pick back up in
• 1:05:54
  the studio so. Yes, yes.
• 1:05:56
  That's what matters, OK? And all of this will be fine.
• 1:06:01
  I knew when you disappeared, I was like, but I was like, I'm
• 1:06:05
  just gonna. But I was like, I'll just hold
• 1:06:07
  the line. That's fine.
• 1:06:08
  Thank you. I'm glad.
• 1:06:09
  I'm glad you did. Because I wasn't trying to go
• 1:06:12
  nowhere. It booted me out.
• 1:06:14
  Girl I was booted me out. Go back and look at it, be like,
• 1:06:18
  she didn't even move. I was like, OK, I'll just.
• 1:06:22
  I looked at my phone. I'm like, I'm just scrolling.
• 1:06:24
  I'm like, so I knew you're going to come back and I did not want
• 1:06:27
  to do anything to stop the record.
• 1:06:28
  I was like, I don't even want to turn my camera.
• 1:06:30
  I'm not touching a thing. I want this to stay.
• 1:06:32
  Recording for keeping it open OK of.
• 1:06:36
  Course, of course. All right.
• 1:06:38
  Had I just asked the question and you were getting into
• 1:06:42
  answering yes, how can couples talk about like, desire without
• 1:06:48
  blame and defensiveness? So, OK, if desire is the issue,
• 1:06:54
  I would approach it like I would any other issue in a
• 1:06:56
  relationship. The issue does not come in
• 1:07:00
  between the couple. OK, so the issue is desire.
• 1:07:05
  It doesn't become the you have too much and that's why it's a
• 1:07:10
  problem or you don't have enough.
• 1:07:12
  So that's why the problem, it's the problem is external.
• 1:07:16
  It's like the couple. Is it a team?
• 1:07:19
  And we mentioned earlier about how you can collaborate and have
• 1:07:21
  these sexual experiences where you're both getting what you
• 1:07:24
  want out of it. Don't break the team.
• 1:07:28
  The team is the team. The issue is the issue.
• 1:07:31
  The team approaches the issue. OK, so it's like, it's no
• 1:07:34
  different than, you know, sometimes couples are arguing
• 1:07:37
  about like chores, like I'll use like I'll use a sock on the
• 1:07:42
  floor, for example. Well, they need to just pick
• 1:07:44
  this sock up. I'm so tired of picking up these
• 1:07:46
  socks, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:07:48
  Look at me, blah, blah. Look at it is what it is.
• 1:07:51
  Then I was like, well, whose floor is it and whose
• 1:07:54
  responsibility is it to keep the floor clean?
• 1:07:57
  If we say this is our house, this is our floor, then it's
• 1:08:00
  like, OK, like you grab the sock, I grab the drawers,
• 1:08:04
  whatever is on the floor, like I'll do this, you do that, and
• 1:08:07
  now our floor is clean. If it's around, I'm like usually
• 1:08:10
  a session. I use a mop example.
• 1:08:12
  I think cleaning the floor is better than a side.
• 1:08:14
  But follow me. It's it's us.
• 1:08:17
  It's us as a team. We keep the house clean, we keep
• 1:08:21
  our sexual energy flowing. We keep the bills paid like we
• 1:08:25
  we, we it's the weedness. So really approaching issues is
• 1:08:29
  like this is a we problem and we can find a solution is going to
• 1:08:33
  set folks up much better than you're the problem.
• 1:08:36
  You find the. Same, because that's going to
• 1:08:40
  kill desire even more. Girls don't kill desire.
• 1:08:43
  It's going to increase conflict. It's going to be a whole whole
• 1:08:46
  things. It's something when I'm at work,
• 1:08:47
  I'm listening for those we moments, you know, just how much
• 1:08:52
  weakness is in their relationship.
• 1:08:55
  And I bring up the floor thing because I mean, oftentimes
• 1:08:57
  someone, a lot of the times my clients are coming in because
• 1:09:00
  they're having conflict issues and then they're also having
• 1:09:02
  desire issues, right? So then it's like you see these
• 1:09:06
  kind of comparisons like, well, how are we approaching conflict
• 1:09:09
  in in general? And then looking at and then how
• 1:09:11
  are we approaching the sexual issues?
• 1:09:13
  And if I'm seeing a lot of finger kind of pointing or even
• 1:09:16
  a lot of shame, like it's I'm the problem, like, you know,
• 1:09:19
  the, the house is a mess because I'm inadequate with my, my role
• 1:09:22
  as a mother or I'm my role as, as a, as a wife or, you know,
• 1:09:26
  our sex isn't great because I'm inadequate with my role as a
• 1:09:30
  lover, right, or my, my role as a, you know, whatever your
• 1:09:34
  expectation is or yourself. So moving from that to like we
• 1:09:38
  and would be one of them. Curiosity is another one.
• 1:09:41
  Just being really curious, like really, really, really curious.
• 1:09:46
  What feels good, what doesn't, what don't.
• 1:09:48
  I like, why don't I like that? Especially if it's one person
• 1:09:51
  like something the other person doesn't like it.
• 1:09:54
  For the person that doesn't like it, is there any willingness for
• 1:09:58
  them to engage with this thing? Will they at least talk about
• 1:10:00
  it? Like can you talk about the
• 1:10:02
  thing you don't want to do? Or is there a space for us to
• 1:10:05
  talk about it because you don't want to do it?
• 1:10:06
  And now we're just stuck. So sometimes that openness to
• 1:10:10
  explore, you find that you might be able to engage to a degree
• 1:10:14
  and maybe you don't have to go beyond your boundary or maybe
• 1:10:18
  you just don't do it. But does that mean that your
• 1:10:20
  partner now doesn't get to explore or is there space?
• 1:10:23
  You know, we talked about fantasy, we talked about, you
• 1:10:24
  know, so you get to, you can make your relationship the way
• 1:10:27
  you want to make it and you can define the boundaries of your
• 1:10:30
  relationship in ways that work for you because there's no
• 1:10:33
  cookie cutter relationship. So the hawk from a place of
• 1:10:37
  curiosity and non judgment can help people figure out what are
• 1:10:41
  their boundaries in their relationship and that's a way to
• 1:10:44
  move from that the blame of it all.
• 1:10:48
  Yeah, one more thing on blame, right?
• 1:10:51
  What if one or both or however many people are in the
• 1:10:55
  relationship? What if they believe in like,
• 1:11:01
  radical accountability and somebody's got to take the
• 1:11:06
  blame, somebody's got to be responsible?
• 1:11:09
  What does that look like? Can you say more about that?
• 1:11:15
  So it could be like the people who let me see, let me see, let
• 1:11:21
  me see, let me see where something bad has happened.
• 1:11:25
  Neither one of you have asked for this bad thing to happen,
• 1:11:28
  but it is shown up at the door, right?
• 1:11:33
  Like the person who has to always have to have somebody to
• 1:11:36
  blame. So if it's not them, then it's
• 1:11:39
  you. What does that then do for
• 1:11:46
  desire and like intimacy? How can that impact the
• 1:11:49
  relationship? The way that I'm thinking about
• 1:11:51
  this is not the way you're answered that you're asking it,
• 1:11:54
  which is why tell. Me what?
• 1:11:55
  Tell me what you're thinking and it might be real good.
• 1:11:58
  We I can roll with you. If that's your, if that's your
• 1:12:01
  thing, if that, if that is attached to desire for you, like
• 1:12:05
  if finding a person or an object to say like you are wrong or you
• 1:12:12
  were to blame or you and that makes you feel aroused and that
• 1:12:17
  that's something to explore. That's something to explore.
• 1:12:21
  But you gotta let your partner know.
• 1:12:23
  You have to let your partner know so that even the word
• 1:12:26
  explore, right? And we're talking about this in
• 1:12:30
  Did you hear That? Yes, it's cute.
• 1:12:32
  You probably heard my little one chomping over.
• 1:12:35
  I didn't even hear. I didn't hear.
• 1:12:37
  I know he's ready to be let out. I'm gonna go get him in a
• 1:12:39
  second. But there's.
• 1:12:42
  So yes, explore with your partner.
• 1:12:45
  It's something you could explain now if it's coming and it's
• 1:12:49
  also, I'm attaching it to the if the person that they need, if
• 1:12:52
  they like that and that makes them feel good in certain
• 1:12:56
  contexts, then I would say that's something you can explore
• 1:12:58
  because you could talk about explicit power exchange and
• 1:13:02
  negotiations around that when it comes to sexual intimacy.
• 1:13:05
  I mean, there's a whole literature, a whole community
• 1:13:07
  around kink and and consensual power exchanges and explicit
• 1:13:10
  agreements around that. I don't think that was the way
• 1:13:13
  you were asking it, but that is. Right.
• 1:13:16
  But that's also a way that was helpful to somebody.
• 1:13:21
  Right. That is a way.
• 1:13:23
  Now the other, the other piece to that is if it if it's
• 1:13:27
  something that they're doing, but maybe they don't, they don't
• 1:13:29
  feel good about it. Or maybe they are based on
• 1:13:31
  accountability and they are really wired to feel like I
• 1:13:34
  can't be made whole about this infraction unless I can.
• 1:13:37
  Yeah. You know, identify, I mean, you
• 1:13:40
  know, if I think about it from a strength space strengths
• 1:13:42
  perspective that could be really aligned with social justice.
• 1:13:44
  So I don't even I wouldn't even frame that as necessarily a
• 1:13:47
  problem, but I would be curious to look at how is that impacting
• 1:13:50
  the partner. And like, what is, you know, I'm
• 1:13:53
  also thinking, what do you, I am so curious about what, what do
• 1:13:55
  you get out of that about finding?
• 1:13:56
  Because sometimes there's no one to blame or the thing to blame
• 1:13:59
  might be more of a ideology or like a concept.
• 1:14:02
  It may not be that you can find an individual person to blame
• 1:14:07
  it. It's I'm curious, I would be
• 1:14:09
  curious about what that kind of that wiring of like that, that
• 1:14:14
  need that to like I got to blame someone.
• 1:14:16
  How was that connected to desire?
• 1:14:19
  Because on the surface I don't really see it, but I think
• 1:14:21
  talking more about it, I might be able to see it.
• 1:14:23
  And then if there is a way to reframe that to where it could
• 1:14:27
  feel good for all parties involved, then we could we can.
• 1:14:30
  That is, that's why I said that's something to explore.
• 1:14:32
  Like, I certainly wouldn't say like, Oh, that's a problem, but
• 1:14:34
  it's just like, how do we explore this in a way that's
• 1:14:36
  like, it just feels, oh, he's mad, girl, he's mad.
• 1:14:40
  He run the house, this dog run the house.
• 1:14:46
  He. Said how dare you?
• 1:14:48
  And I hear you out there. I know he do.
• 1:14:51
  He's he's fine. Yes.
• 1:14:54
  And on the other side of that, I could see how that could
• 1:14:56
  definitely kill a vibe, you know what I mean?
• 1:15:00
  Kill that desire because again, that's I just like or maybe like
• 1:15:06
  in crouching, like, you know what I mean?
• 1:15:09
  Like it's, I don't know the words, but it's like, you know,
• 1:15:12
  it's, it's like dominance and not in a good way.
• 1:15:14
  Not in a good way, right? So and then and too much of it,
• 1:15:17
  it's like we can roll into unhealthy and even abuse.
• 1:15:20
  So and these things are all exist on the spectrum.
• 1:15:23
  So this is even when I ask it more information and then it's
• 1:15:26
  like, well, you know, I'm I'm slow to to enable things as
• 1:15:29
  problematic without actually being like doing a proper
• 1:15:32
  assessment. And sometimes people, like I
• 1:15:36
  said in the right context, like if that's your thing, like if
• 1:15:39
  you're just like, I want to be able to use my voice in this
• 1:15:42
  way. And I feel, I feel, you know,
• 1:15:45
  around this dominance, like if, if I'm in this dominant role, if
• 1:15:48
  I'm, I, I like feeling in control.
• 1:15:51
  I like feeling a lot of times people that operate in that way
• 1:15:54
  like to take care. They like to nurture the
• 1:15:56
  opposite of that. The person that like oftentimes
• 1:15:58
  falls under the submissive side of things, wants to be taken
• 1:16:01
  care of, wants to just be able to turn their brain off.
• 1:16:02
  A lot of people that are into submission are the decision
• 1:16:05
  makers are always thinking are the ones.
• 1:16:07
  So it's just, it's for some folks they enjoy like, you know,
• 1:16:11
  in certain contexts with people that they feel safe with, you
• 1:16:14
  know, an intimate relationship with someone where they feel
• 1:16:16
  loved and they feel secure and they feel valued.
• 1:16:19
  Play around with those roles and you can say, you know what at
• 1:16:22
  work, in the office, at the research lab, at wherever, I'm
• 1:16:25
  always in control. Everyone is looking at me to to
• 1:16:29
  make the play, to do the thing, to save the day.
• 1:16:32
  And for me when for me, when I come home and I'm in my sexual
• 1:16:36
  space, I just want to be loved on.
• 1:16:38
  I want to be cherished. I want to be adored.
• 1:16:40
  I don't want to think, I just want to experience pleasure and
• 1:16:43
  then like, okay, someone that likes that they may like that
• 1:16:46
  person that has that high level of structure and accountability
• 1:16:49
  and maybe even somewhat can be even like maybe rigid in certain
• 1:16:52
  areas. That doesn't mean that it's like
• 1:16:54
  you might be like. So again, explore and bring it
• 1:16:57
  in. If like, how can we play with
• 1:16:58
  these things? If you've identified that
• 1:17:01
  there's a relationship between this part of your personality
• 1:17:03
  and desire. So I'm curious if it's a link, I
• 1:17:07
  say play with it. If it's not and it feels really
• 1:17:09
  problematic and it feels then it's like a problematic in the
• 1:17:12
  sense that you're violating someone else's right.
• 1:17:14
  Like, you know, if your desire also comes at someone else's
• 1:17:18
  like pain or something and pain that they don't want to
• 1:17:22
  experience, pain that does not feel pleasurable for them, their
• 1:17:25
  disempowerment, like things like that, then I you know, we might
• 1:17:28
  be talking about something else like we.
• 1:17:30
  That's good. That's good.
• 1:17:31
  Thank you for that. Thank you.
• 1:17:33
  So because the fluctuation of desire can change in a lot of
• 1:17:41
  relationships because you know, if you're in a longer term
• 1:17:44
  relationship, you're going through many seasons and
• 1:17:46
  different types of things happen in life, right?
• 1:17:50
  So for anyone at any point, it's who we're talking about now,
• 1:17:54
  because this can happen if it hasn't happened, if it already
• 1:17:56
  has and you're trying to find your way back, how do people
• 1:17:59
  find their way back to like that desire, that safe space where
• 1:18:03
  they have that the connection that they truly desire?
• 1:18:07
  Yeah. So I like that you're bringing
• 1:18:11
  it back to like the changes because there's before I answer
• 1:18:15
  your question, I'll say this, a lot of us were we myself kind of
• 1:18:21
  raise or socialize to believe that you have this, you lose
• 1:18:25
  your virginity earlier. I think I said word lose.
• 1:18:29
  Yeah, losing, right, Lose your virginity.
• 1:18:33
  And I appreciate the the I might have to be him girl, I
• 1:18:37
  appreciate it. I mean.
• 1:18:39
  If you need to go pause, I'm. Just going to take him out.
• 1:18:43
  OK. Do you want to go with that one?
• 1:18:47
  That's what you think? You can come here.
• 1:18:49
  He's just OK. All right.
• 1:18:52
  Yeah, I got 2 little ones. One is literally sitting on my
• 1:18:54
  feet right now. I should have kept him here.
• 1:18:57
  Sometimes he tries to be neighborhood patrol, so I was
• 1:18:59
  just like, let me put him. He would have been in the
• 1:19:01
  window. Yeah, cuz, but you know what, he
• 1:19:03
  could have sat on one cuz no one's really outside because of
• 1:19:05
  the snow. He likes to be by the window and
• 1:19:07
  then he'll bark at everybody he sees and nobody wants to hear
• 1:19:09
  that. But yeah, he's he'll be all
• 1:19:12
  right. OK, You could just asked me
• 1:19:14
  about. I like get the desire back
• 1:19:18
  rebuilding. And then, OK, so how to get it
• 1:19:21
  back? I was on a roll too debuts.
• 1:19:24
  That's what I was saying. OK, so we have you you decide
• 1:19:28
  this idea, right? You lose a virginity flawed for
• 1:19:32
  a lot of different reasons. The one that I'll focus on at
• 1:19:35
  least a start is around the concept like it's like a one and
• 1:19:38
  done like you lose it and then you're you're done.
• 1:19:42
  So you're, I wasn't even thinking about it that way, but
• 1:19:46
  yes, yes, yes, yes. The other piece of it is we're
• 1:19:50
  like novelty and desire are really important.
• 1:19:54
  Like we like novel, we like new experiences.
• 1:19:56
  And if you think about the first time that you have sex, your
• 1:20:00
  sexual debut, you get to have more than one debut like you
• 1:20:05
  you. You can have debuts throughout
• 1:20:07
  your life. As we said earlier, body
• 1:20:10
  changes. You have different experiences.
• 1:20:13
  Some of us are going to experience menopause.
• 1:20:15
  Just because you go through menopause doesn't mean that
• 1:20:17
  you're no longer a sexual being. You don't ever have desire.
• 1:20:21
  Your body doesn't get to feel pleasure, so it's coming back to
• 1:20:26
  OK. Desire has fluctuated.
• 1:20:28
  You don't know where it went. You don't know what turns you on
• 1:20:31
  anymore. You don't know what gets too
• 1:20:32
  excited. This is an opportunity to
• 1:20:35
  explore new debuts. This is an opportunity to see
• 1:20:39
  what can feel pleasurable for me now, What do I like?
• 1:20:43
  What am I not into? You can explore that with your
• 1:20:47
  partner partners. You can start to explore that
• 1:20:49
  even with yourself. Sometimes you were into erotica,
• 1:20:54
  Sometimes you can audio listen to things you can.
• 1:20:57
  You can have different experiences, join different
• 1:21:00
  communities. There's there's variety of ways
• 1:21:03
  that you can that people can start to explore and just open
• 1:21:06
  themselves up to things just from a space of curiosity.
• 1:21:09
  Like you can just cuz you can learn about something doesn't
• 1:21:13
  mean you have to do it doesn't mean it's your thing.
• 1:21:14
  But if you're looking for kind of like what is going to help me
• 1:21:18
  feel like I can get back in track or what is something
• 1:21:20
  that's going to help me even start a new track, I try to open
• 1:21:25
  it up to where you get to have more experiences and more
• 1:21:28
  debuts. And it's not just like I said
• 1:21:31
  this one time thing. So I appreciate kind of moving
• 1:21:34
  away from losing virginity. Definitely the things you said
• 1:21:37
  around value and disposability and giving something up, taking
• 1:21:41
  something, I think all of those kind of like those ways of
• 1:21:45
  thinking really can drain like your your resources as it as it
• 1:21:49
  comes to desire. So I'm like, let's like stop
• 1:21:52
  those, those energy drains and kind of find some things that
• 1:21:55
  got supplement just like look for supplements to desire can
• 1:21:59
  help for sure. And then I would also say talk,
• 1:22:02
  some folks need to talk to their doctors.
• 1:22:03
  Sometimes there are just biological things that are
• 1:22:06
  happening. So you know, check in with
• 1:22:08
  doctor or check for your overall Wellness, overall stress, things
• 1:22:12
  like that. And we mentioned earlier like
• 1:22:14
  anxiety, there's there's other non sexual things that could be
• 1:22:18
  happening that could be draining that relationship health is
• 1:22:22
  another thing as a relationship violence.
• 1:22:24
  Like does this feel is a relationship stable?
• 1:22:26
  Like those things can also drain desire.
• 1:22:29
  So if you're trying to get things back on track, kind of
• 1:22:32
  want to look at a holistic assessment of what's happening
• 1:22:34
  here, because there could, you could be multiple reasons why
• 1:22:37
  you're just not feeling it anymore.
• 1:22:39
  Unfortunately, what, what stops people sometimes from getting
• 1:22:43
  into that exploration phase is that they're stuck at the shame
• 1:22:45
  they're stuck at. Like it's, it's, you can't
• 1:22:47
  really problem solve from there. Like if you, if you, if, if the,
• 1:22:50
  if the problem is you then like then you can't, that doesn't
• 1:22:54
  give you much space to start to look for a solution.
• 1:22:57
  So if you're able to like move into that kind of solution,
• 1:23:00
  thinking, curiosity, exploration, that creates now a
• 1:23:05
  whole new like multiple different perspectives to to
• 1:23:08
  look at this. And you can, you can make
• 1:23:10
  movement there like it's hard to move from shame or.
• 1:23:14
  Yeah, I'm, I love that you introduce the medical piece of
• 1:23:20
  it, right? Because there are really and
• 1:23:21
  truly sometimes things that are really medical that are
• 1:23:24
  happening and sometimes people don't realize it.
• 1:23:27
  And then even just mental health can have an impact on their
• 1:23:30
  anxiety, depression, if there's grief, any type of loss, just
• 1:23:34
  different things that have happened in the relationship and
• 1:23:37
  maybe things aren't going the way that you all plan.
• 1:23:39
  And I like that. And then this notion of
• 1:23:43
  debuting, I like this because even if you're in a long term
• 1:23:49
  marriage, right, we like if ourselves are regenerating every
• 1:23:53
  seven years and we're becoming different versions of ourselves.
• 1:23:57
  It is an opportunity to reintroduce your partner to who
• 1:24:02
  you are and to be open because as surely as you are changing,
• 1:24:06
  so are your. SO is your partner, and you both
• 1:24:09
  need the freedom to explore and connect with the new versions of
• 1:24:15
  self. Absolutely.
• 1:24:17
  So really and truly, I think it's fun.
• 1:24:20
  You can get to have a new person without having a new person.
• 1:24:26
  But you know. That is it that that is why this
• 1:24:31
  is one of my favorite things to talk about because it renews, it
• 1:24:34
  generate its debut. What are your new sexual debuts?
• 1:24:38
  What are you excited about trying?
• 1:24:39
  Especially when you remove the expectation like you could try
• 1:24:42
  it if it doesn't go the way you expected, if it if you thought
• 1:24:46
  it was going to be fun and it wasn't fun.
• 1:24:48
  When you're intentional about it, you feel secure with the
• 1:24:51
  person you, you feel good with yourself.
• 1:24:54
  We can start to think about this in an exciting way, like we, you
• 1:24:57
  know, and, and, and sometimes when I talk to people, I get
• 1:25:00
  really excited. I'm like, Oh my God, like you
• 1:25:01
  can have fun with your sex life. And, you know, and I, I do
• 1:25:04
  remember and, and I so appreciate you even saying like,
• 1:25:06
  let's slow it down a little bit because sometimes, you know, we
• 1:25:09
  got to slow it down so that we can address the reasons why
• 1:25:13
  people might not understand or might not feel like when I say,
• 1:25:16
  Oh, this is so fun. Some people are like, you know,
• 1:25:18
  so it's like, well, we could slow down.
• 1:25:20
  We could talk about, you know, because there are real reasons
• 1:25:22
  why some people are not super excited about the topic or some
• 1:25:25
  people that is very valid. And I don't want to the
• 1:25:29
  offensive or to seem as if like I'm just indifferent to, to
• 1:25:33
  things that people have gone through.
• 1:25:35
  Like I, I understand it to the, you know, I understand it.
• 1:25:38
  I'm open to grow and learn more though, So I don't want to make
• 1:25:40
  it, you know, But I also get excited when I think about how
• 1:25:44
  we can heal and how our relationships can be transformed
• 1:25:48
  when we approach things with curiosity, when we're moving
• 1:25:52
  from shame and doubt. We're coming from a place of
• 1:25:54
  acceptance and self love and not thinking about worth, you know.
• 1:25:58
  And, and like the, you know, I feel like you have to, you have
• 1:26:00
  to work for, you know, to be good enough for a pleasurable
• 1:26:03
  sex life. And just like you, you get to
• 1:26:06
  have a like you get to have that you, you deserve to be in a
• 1:26:09
  relationship and community, people that affirm that.
• 1:26:11
  And to the person that you're, you're sharing your body with,
• 1:26:15
  you deserve to be in those commitments where they also
• 1:26:17
  respect that and they want to treat you with love and respect.
• 1:26:20
  And there there's a mutual interest in getting to the kind
• 1:26:25
  of experiences that feel good for everybody involved.
• 1:26:28
  That excites me. Like that gets me super hyped.
• 1:26:31
  So I felt like, girl, I'm so excited to come and talk to you
• 1:26:33
  about this on here today. Also what I just heard you
• 1:26:40
  address is about like moving away from performance and really
• 1:26:44
  being present, creating a safe space, talking about the things
• 1:26:49
  and you know, the old folks used to say if you can't talk about
• 1:26:52
  it, then you shouldn't be doing it right and.
• 1:26:56
  There's there's something to. That you know, there is
• 1:26:58
  something to that. Like it's very like old school.
• 1:27:01
  But even sometimes the people that saying it, they don't even
• 1:27:03
  be talking. That's a separate thing.
• 1:27:06
  But I mean, they they were onto something.
• 1:27:09
  And I think the more that you can talk about it, I don't mean
• 1:27:11
  that you have to like analyze it like to the ground where it's
• 1:27:17
  like no longer enjoyable, but there are certain things that
• 1:27:21
  should be discussed. They can be discussed in a way
• 1:27:25
  that is that's still like sexy, that's still engaging.
• 1:27:31
  And it might be uncomfortable to start, but you got to you got to
• 1:27:36
  communicate. Like it's another form of
• 1:27:38
  intimacy. It requires vulnerability.
• 1:27:40
  And yeah, you have to understand your partner like, so that needs
• 1:27:44
  are being met and they're not looking elsewhere forward.
• 1:27:47
  Or if it's a space where they don't feel safe to talk about
• 1:27:49
  it, then they go and sneak. Yes, exactly.
• 1:27:52
  Which is also very damaging for go ahead.
• 1:27:56
  No, I'm just I'm doubling down on what you're saying, girl.
• 1:27:58
  I'm like to all parties involved to all you get in and and
• 1:28:02
  there's a thing with doing with the sneaking is now we're moving
• 1:28:06
  outside of the bounds of consent.
• 1:28:09
  So if you're getting if you're getting sexual needs met outside
• 1:28:12
  of your committed relationship and now we're having an issue
• 1:28:16
  with consent because you're. More people might not think this
• 1:28:19
  is a consent violation. Yeah, so you think about it, if
• 1:28:22
  we're in a relationship and the terms of our relationship or
• 1:28:25
  that we are in a monogamous relationship, this is what we
• 1:28:28
  have agreed to. This is a, you know,
• 1:28:30
  relationships are sets of agreements.
• 1:28:32
  So we've agreed to this. If someone in the relationship
• 1:28:36
  steps out to get a need met, whatever, you know, we're
• 1:28:39
  talking about sex, sex, emotions and all these things.
• 1:28:42
  The person that is still in the relationship that hasn't stepped
• 1:28:46
  out, they didn't consent. They did not consent to be in a
• 1:28:48
  relationship with someone who has a secondary partner.
• 1:28:53
  Now, if you want to be in a relationship where there are
• 1:28:56
  multiple partners, you want to explore open relationships, you
• 1:28:59
  want to explore polyamory, you are.
• 1:29:01
  You are welcome to do that. Folks have to be on board.
• 1:29:05
  The people you're in relationships with, they, they
• 1:29:07
  need to be able to agree to that.
• 1:29:09
  So it's just, and I mean, I'm saying need because as I said
• 1:29:11
  before, I promote consent. So I, I, I'm here to work with
• 1:29:15
  you. So you're right.
• 1:29:17
  Sometimes people don't think about it that way.
• 1:29:20
  And even me, I'm, I'm not, I work with folks who have been
• 1:29:24
  impacted by affairs either people who are in, who have
• 1:29:27
  engaged in them, people who their partners have.
• 1:29:30
  So, you know, and I, there is really complex, there's really
• 1:29:34
  complexities and it's certainly not something where I could just
• 1:29:36
  say all good, all bad. But when I talk about consent,
• 1:29:39
  like this is a consent violation and you fall under the type
• 1:29:43
  people that like value consent and you, you, you know, you
• 1:29:47
  consider yourself a consensual person that operates from that
• 1:29:50
  way. Then you've got to how do we
• 1:29:52
  reconcile that Then like how are we saying I support consent and
• 1:29:56
  I also support side quests and side missions.
• 1:30:00
  We got to talk about that. We got to talk about that.
• 1:30:04
  I'm just saying. Yeah, Side Quest is crazy, but
• 1:30:13
  it's real. It's real.
• 1:30:14
  It is real girl. Oh my goodness.
• 1:30:17
  OK, so Speaking of real, how does faith intersect with like
• 1:30:23
  stress, you know, embracing and embodying like your sexuality?
• 1:30:28
  Like where do you think those how those things all intersect?
• 1:30:32
  Yeah, yeah, faith is really interesting.
• 1:30:34
  So I guess this with the stress piece, right, it can be really
• 1:30:38
  helpful for stress management. Faith can give people just a
• 1:30:42
  sense of purpose, grounding connection you can ties to
• 1:30:47
  identity. So there's, there's a lot of
• 1:30:50
  positives and things from that, right?
• 1:30:53
  Even in terms of relationship like align, when couples are
• 1:30:57
  aligning on their faith and their values, religion like that
• 1:31:00
  can be really supportive for the relationship.
• 1:31:04
  There's the other piece where we talked about messages.
• 1:31:08
  Sometimes people get negative messages around sex from their
• 1:31:13
  from from their religion and that can cause distress for
• 1:31:18
  sure. There is also though kid and I
• 1:31:25
  don't want to say can be sources of empowerment, but I do know I
• 1:31:29
  was reading something where it was a study with black gay men
• 1:31:34
  and some of it was a qualitative study and some of the men were
• 1:31:36
  talking about how they received these negative messages and it
• 1:31:39
  caused distress. Then they also engaged with the
• 1:31:42
  literature and were able to find their be able to find other
• 1:31:46
  scriptures and things are more balanced.
• 1:31:48
  So it's, it's so I appreciate the question because it's not.
• 1:31:51
  I think some sometimes in like the popular culture, we might
• 1:31:54
  hear like, you know, the people from a certain faith, religious
• 1:31:59
  practices rather, or like anti, you know, like anti sex or anti.
• 1:32:04
  And that's not always like not always the case.
• 1:32:08
  I, I find that things can be really highly individualized.
• 1:32:12
  So even as a clinician, I get curious about, about that.
• 1:32:17
  And then I would also say, oh, I think I'm good.
• 1:32:21
  I think I I might have another thought, but I want to hear what
• 1:32:23
  you're going to say because you start talking about 3 things to
• 1:32:25
  say. No, I was just also thinking
• 1:32:28
  about what you were saying about how sometimes, well, obviously
• 1:32:31
  the grounding in like identity, I think that's that's a huge
• 1:32:34
  part of it. And sometimes people they're
• 1:32:36
  looking for an identity and sometimes that can happen
• 1:32:39
  through relationships and sex as well.
• 1:32:41
  So I think faith is a great place to ground understand what
• 1:32:44
  you believe in. What goes back, and this goes
• 1:32:46
  back to what we were talking about earlier about that sense
• 1:32:50
  of self and self respect and self value and all of that and
• 1:32:54
  where that comes from. And so faith can definitely be a
• 1:32:56
  source for that. And obviously I could see how
• 1:32:58
  that could trickle into your decision making, how you view
• 1:33:03
  sex, when and, and how you engage with sex and so on.
• 1:33:08
  And frequency. There was something else.
• 1:33:10
  Oh, shoot, did I lose it? No, I didn't lose it.
• 1:33:13
  You were saying how the, you know, there's not enough direct
• 1:33:16
  talk about sex like from the church and a scripture that came
• 1:33:21
  to mind. Some people might not like that
• 1:33:23
  I say this, but the people feel perish for lack of knowledge,
• 1:33:26
  right? And so you can't expect the
• 1:33:32
  inexperienced to go out into the world and be prepared to deal
• 1:33:36
  with sex. Speak on it.
• 1:33:39
  And navigate that if there's no conversation other than you just
• 1:33:42
  don't do it or you wait for meanwhile they're having all of
• 1:33:45
  these desires, they're having these thoughts and urges, right?
• 1:33:50
  And so then people separate that.
• 1:33:53
  And I think that's sometimes why we see so many scandals, because
• 1:33:57
  people are suppressing what's natural rather than someone
• 1:34:01
  normalizing get to say yes, that is normal, what you feel and
• 1:34:05
  this is what a healthy relationship looks like.
• 1:34:08
  And sometimes people encourage, I might be going into a whole
• 1:34:12
  different area here. It could be a different episode
• 1:34:15
  in itself. But I think sometimes people are
• 1:34:18
  encouraged to get married too early to avoid sexual sin.
• 1:34:24
  But then they go into all of this distress because they're
• 1:34:28
  motivated by sex. They really and truly got
• 1:34:32
  married because they want to have sex.
• 1:34:33
  And I know someone who who it was shared with, shared with me
• 1:34:37
  that someones like, yeah, that that that was their motivation
• 1:34:40
  for really getting married at a young age, being like 19 or 20
• 1:34:44
  and never understanding true intimacy and like building that
• 1:34:49
  right? And the impact that it can have
• 1:34:51
  because then what happens? Because now they're miserable
• 1:34:54
  because they never really belong together to begin with.
• 1:34:58
  And now people are saying we all together now.
• 1:35:04
  And so now they feel pressured. And then you have that divorce,
• 1:35:09
  all of the the stickiness around that, right?
• 1:35:12
  And people giving their interpretations about what it is
• 1:35:19
  and what it shouldn't be, when I think that's one of those things
• 1:35:21
  that you you have to really and truly talk to God about.
• 1:35:27
  And especially if you're in a relationship where you given all
• 1:35:31
  that you can give and done all that you can do, you know, it's
• 1:35:35
  it's not working out. I don't think anyone should feel
• 1:35:37
  trapped in that way. I think you definitely need to
• 1:35:40
  pray for yourself, pray for your partner, pray for the marriage
• 1:35:43
  and whatever the things are that are coming against the two of
• 1:35:47
  you. And I love also what you said
• 1:35:48
  about the working together to get to the problem.
• 1:35:53
  So y'all are the base, right? Like so they're the base.
• 1:35:56
  That energy shouldn't be pointed here.
• 1:35:58
  It should be pointed up here to solving that problem.
• 1:36:02
  And for some people they're they're better people apart.
• 1:36:06
  And there's nothing that is unredeemable when it comes to
• 1:36:10
  faith. And so I know I said a whole lot
• 1:36:13
  in there, but. No, you did.
• 1:36:16
  You was cooking though you were cooking.
• 1:36:18
  I agree with you that could be a whole.
• 1:36:20
  You should get your. Bag.
• 1:36:21
  That's the. Whole thing, the thing though,
• 1:36:23
  that you, the thing I'm losing it.
• 1:36:25
  The kind of where you were landing around all things being
• 1:36:29
  used to redeem. Quite redeemable.
• 1:36:31
  I'm losing it. I mean, I use.
• 1:36:33
  That was the word I use. OK.
• 1:36:35
  No, I like that. I like, I love that.
• 1:36:36
  I do love that. And I think that aligns with the
• 1:36:39
  concept like repair, right? And we're talking relationships
• 1:36:42
  then also we don't like to think about it this way.
• 1:36:47
  And I'll say it, there's an ending point for every
• 1:36:51
  relationship. It just is what it is.
• 1:36:53
  It is. Smile because it made me think
• 1:36:55
  about this clip that I did. Talk about expired love and
• 1:37:00
  staying well after the expiration date.
• 1:37:03
  Been there, been there real sour and milk.
• 1:37:06
  I ain't going back, OK, been there.
• 1:37:09
  I ain't going back. It happens, it happens.
• 1:37:14
  Relationships have endpoints. You know, you, you might be
• 1:37:17
  married and it could be till death do us part and you know,
• 1:37:20
  depending. And when I say endpoints, I'm
• 1:37:21
  talking in this in this realm, right?
• 1:37:23
  Like, you know what happens after we leave here.
• 1:37:25
  I'm not, I'm not speaking about that.
• 1:37:27
  I'm talking about in the in the here and now.
• 1:37:30
  Everything is going to end, he interpret.
• 1:37:36
  I love it. I feel, I feel here.
• 1:37:38
  We're here with it. That sounds like girl it don't
• 1:37:41
  even buy a dog bark. I do not flinch I.
• 1:37:44
  Love that I love that relationships will end and
• 1:37:50
  understanding. You know, we talked earlier
• 1:37:52
  about some of these expectations and things that even just on
• 1:37:56
  relationships. And there's this, you know, idea
• 1:37:59
  out here in the popular culture that you have one true love in
• 1:38:03
  that you know your your mission in life is to find that person
• 1:38:06
  connect with them and y'all gonna ride that thing to the
• 1:38:08
  wills fall off. It don't matter how they
• 1:38:10
  treating you. It don't matter how you feel.
• 1:38:13
  It don't matter how many times you can beg.
• 1:38:15
  It doesn't matter none of that. You just hold on to the wills
• 1:38:17
  fall off. Sometimes you need to take the
• 1:38:21
  exit route and like. You getting dragged?
• 1:38:24
  Drag left round and and you think about and you know, I'm a
• 1:38:31
  lean on. I'm have to lean on you a little
• 1:38:32
  bit from this, but you have to you know, you think about the
• 1:38:35
  faith, you think about. You know what someone may feel
• 1:38:39
  that you know that God spirit, however, you know, however
• 1:38:42
  they're making sense out of it. Put them in this position like
• 1:38:46
  you're supposed to be getting dragged up and down and, and
• 1:38:49
  feel it. I don't know if that's like, I
• 1:38:51
  don't know, I don't know if that's where you got and how
• 1:38:54
  long are you going to be in that?
• 1:38:55
  Like, and then who, how do you get out of that?
• 1:38:57
  Like IRG, are you just supposed to stay in that?
• 1:39:00
  Like we look at if it's not help?
• 1:39:02
  So these are kind of some of the, the things that I start to
• 1:39:05
  consider. And then you think about I had
• 1:39:07
  this, I did this training years ago.
• 1:39:08
  It was really powerful. It was a Muslim moment and she
• 1:39:11
  was talking about like Muslim faith and and sexual education
• 1:39:14
  and something she said that really stood out to me those
• 1:39:16
  around values based decisions. So when I and you just just
• 1:39:22
  thinking, getting really clear on like, what are your values as
• 1:39:25
  you understand it with your, your faith or your religious
• 1:39:28
  found it like whatever, whatever your values are rooted in.
• 1:39:31
  And then you kind of think about that and then kind of look back
• 1:39:35
  at the relationship. And now we can have a
• 1:39:37
  conversation like, is this an alignment with my values?
• 1:39:40
  Like, you know, are we are we on?
• 1:39:42
  Is there an alignment here? And if there's not, then start
• 1:39:45
  to think about like, how do, how do I need to move in ways to
• 1:39:48
  where I'm feeling more aligned? I'm feeling like what I'm living
• 1:39:51
  is truly embodying the word or we know what, whatever, whatever
• 1:39:56
  it is that you're that you're grounding your faith in
• 1:39:59
  sometimes. Get so blended up, you know,
• 1:40:02
  they're so especially an example, you're giving someone
• 1:40:03
  who's really young and when they make this decision, and I think
• 1:40:07
  sometimes folks get so blended up and then they don't even
• 1:40:09
  realize they're so they're so disconnected.
• 1:40:11
  So it's just like trying to help folks get oriented back oriented
• 1:40:15
  to your faith, oriented to yourself.
• 1:40:17
  And you know, then from there you might be able to see just
• 1:40:19
  clearer, is this the relationship that's really
• 1:40:21
  serving you? Is this relationship where
• 1:40:23
  you're going to actually be able to have a thriving sexual
• 1:40:28
  health, sexual sexuality is just a part of your health.
• 1:40:32
  So is this is this? Yeah.
• 1:40:34
  Does this is this relationship fostering that or is it not?
• 1:40:39
  And and you know, you said Craig, right, we got get with
• 1:40:42
  your support the breakdown of that relationship, the divorce.
• 1:40:47
  It's not, it's not a an indictment like who you are as a
• 1:40:49
  person. Or a lot of people believe it
• 1:40:52
  is. No, I know it's it's
• 1:40:54
  heartbreaking. I guess in clinical and non
• 1:40:56
  clinical space, it's still really it gets me like it gets
• 1:40:58
  me. I show up differently though, if
• 1:41:00
  it's like a home girl compared to a client, that makes sense.
• 1:41:02
  But it's just, it's heartbreaking to, it requires, I
• 1:41:06
  guess for me, both sides, patients, honestly just kind of
• 1:41:09
  patience people are going through, going through what
• 1:41:12
  they're going through. I love that you brought up the
• 1:41:15
  alignment, right, because like I reflected a lot on myself,
• 1:41:22
  right? And I used to struggle when if
• 1:41:24
  people would say, well, you need to check their fruit and I
• 1:41:31
  wasn't as tapped in then. And I'm like, they literally
• 1:41:34
  just meant like the fruits of the Spirit.
• 1:41:35
  Like how does this align? Or does it align with the fruits
• 1:41:39
  of the spirit? Is it given that First
• 1:41:41
  Corinthians love is patient, love is kind love, you know, all
• 1:41:45
  those things. So I think it took me a long
• 1:41:48
  time to get that because I used to be, I won't say it used to
• 1:41:52
  be, but I could be a very literal person.
• 1:41:55
  We're like, no, I want you to say what you mean and don't
• 1:41:57
  imply it because I will fill it in with something else.
• 1:42:00
  I want us to be clear, like I want to make sure I understand
• 1:42:04
  what you're saying and operating accordingly.
• 1:42:07
  So I love that notion of that. Like, does this align?
• 1:42:10
  And a lot of times, like, even though it's a really hard, was
• 1:42:14
  God even involved in your decision to pursue this person?
• 1:42:20
  Right, right, right. And so yes, you may have
• 1:42:22
  followed the steps, but what was your driving motivation?
• 1:42:26
  And if we go back to the example I use, how sometimes people are
• 1:42:30
  pushed to avoid sexual sin, well that's already telling you was
• 1:42:35
  driving it. So then did y'all really belong
• 1:42:40
  together? Right?
• 1:42:43
  I don't know. Or even if it's not in the
• 1:42:45
  church setting at all. But like, say you come from a a
• 1:42:49
  family that has a Christian background and you're older and
• 1:42:53
  you decide to get married. But like you didn't have a godly
• 1:42:57
  pursuit like a godly dating period.
• 1:43:01
  And then, you know, sometimes we blame God for things.
• 1:43:05
  How could you let this happen? Because we're looking for
• 1:43:07
  somebody to blame you. And sometimes we got to look
• 1:43:09
  back at our choices, our decisions and that type of
• 1:43:15
  radical but non judgmental type of accountability to look at
• 1:43:20
  self and to look at others, I think is what can really help
• 1:43:25
  people to heal and understand what their role was in the
• 1:43:29
  relationship. The breakdown of the desire, the
• 1:43:33
  disconnection, right? What were some of the things I
• 1:43:36
  actually, I probably should have had more boundaries.
• 1:43:39
  I should have spoken up more instead of just going along to
• 1:43:43
  keep the peace and things like that.
• 1:43:47
  The having that kind of question allows like the reflection
• 1:43:54
  you're talking about, but I would even say like having the
• 1:43:59
  courage, just it takes courage, I think for some folks to even
• 1:44:01
  reflect, they look back and reflect with that lens because
• 1:44:05
  even in that it's moving away from I'm the problem.
• 1:44:09
  It's like you can look at the behaviors and say, you know,
• 1:44:11
  next time I come, this comes around and my next relationship
• 1:44:14
  and my next opportunity, I'm going to honor my feelings.
• 1:44:18
  I'm going to express what I need and I and I encourage folks to
• 1:44:22
  do it because I say, you know, it's on you.
• 1:44:24
  Did you do the expression? You can't control how it lands,
• 1:44:27
  but you you, you honor yourself, you know, you honor what needs
• 1:44:30
  to be, what needs to be communicated.
• 1:44:32
  And then and you get the data. Like you say it, you can see how
• 1:44:37
  it lands. Yeah, they respond.
• 1:44:39
  And that's going to help you determine.
• 1:44:40
  I get this is the person that got put into my life that is
• 1:44:44
  going to walk alongside me as I go into this next phase.
• 1:44:47
  And I experience this healing and I experience this love and I
• 1:44:50
  experience like, like it doesn't just happen like you have to.
• 1:44:54
  You have to do your part too. So I so appreciate the way that
• 1:44:58
  you're encouraging people to look back because it's, it's
• 1:45:00
  moving now. Now we can do something with it.
• 1:45:02
  We can get information and we can move, which we have to move
• 1:45:05
  past the shame and the, you know, you got to move past that
• 1:45:10
  so that you can get the data points that you need to do
• 1:45:13
  better. So I, I love that it's like you
• 1:45:14
  can look back and move forward. It's very Sankofa.
• 1:45:17
  We're looking back, we're moving forward.
• 1:45:19
  We're not looking back and staying in it.
• 1:45:22
  You know, I get if you got to look back and you're down,
• 1:45:24
  you're we're human. We get to be depressed a little
• 1:45:26
  bit. You know, you can mourn,
• 1:45:28
  especially talking about divorce.
• 1:45:29
  You mourn, but you know, you're not I'm Kersheltz or even the
• 1:45:32
  way I think about it is like, I'm going to just stay in it.
• 1:45:35
  Like what are the Nuggets that you take Ford?
• 1:45:39
  It's you got more than one true love, one true.
• 1:45:43
  Like that's not it's not the case.
• 1:45:44
  We can we we can connect with a variety of people and the way
• 1:45:48
  you know you're making a good solid connection is exactly what
• 1:45:51
  you're describing. Speak, assert yourself, be drawn
• 1:45:54
  to the people that are drawn to you when you're showing up as
• 1:45:56
  yourself. If you're showing up as yourself
• 1:45:59
  and they're exactly if you're being your authentic self, the
• 1:46:02
  people that are going to be for you, they're going to come and
• 1:46:05
  the ones that ain't, they're not.
• 1:46:06
  And that's cool. We don't you know, it might
• 1:46:08
  sting, but let it go because you you don't want to sign yourself
• 1:46:11
  up to be happen to be in this. Just got to pull them and make
• 1:46:15
  them want you and make them want you.
• 1:46:16
  No, no, no, just be you and they will the right folks for your
• 1:46:20
  this don't come. And see all of that, there's
• 1:46:24
  attachment work, there's identity work.
• 1:46:26
  There's so much that's in there that's really in those early
• 1:46:30
  formative years that people don't realize.
• 1:46:33
  And so people, I don't want to blame my parents.
• 1:46:35
  It has a lot to do with parents and caregivers.
• 1:46:38
  It really and truly does. It ain't even low.
• 1:46:41
  It's a high key to me anyway. It's high key, but like you
• 1:46:45
  don't have to be that way. And I feel what's the word that
• 1:46:50
  I want to say? I have a tender spot for people
• 1:46:55
  who say, well, this is just how I am because this is a person
• 1:46:59
  who doesn't realize the agency that they have.
• 1:47:02
  And that change starts with changing perspective, being open
• 1:47:07
  to something else, listening to it.
• 1:47:10
  But for some people, it's safe and this is how what they know
• 1:47:12
  to navigate. And so this is what they do.
• 1:47:15
  So you'll see people on go through the same relationship
• 1:47:19
  over and over again, but what a different body.
• 1:47:22
  Absolutely. And it's like, you deserve it.
• 1:47:27
  Like, no, you don't know it. But then you're choosing not to.
• 1:47:30
  You're choosing not to do something different.
• 1:47:33
  You're choosing not to give yourself a chance.
• 1:47:39
  I've always been, I don't even know where this has come from of
• 1:47:42
  me, but I'm like, I am a hopeful romantic.
• 1:47:46
  Like I always have believed that because to say hopeless
• 1:47:50
  romantic, that means it's not going to work out.
• 1:47:52
  And I forget I was some point in my 20s, maybe late 20s and I was
• 1:47:56
  like, no, I'm not a hopeless romantic.
• 1:47:58
  I'm hopeful. Everybody that wants, like we
• 1:48:02
  all deserve to be loved in some sort of way.
• 1:48:05
  Some people don't desire romantic love, but like we're
• 1:48:07
  created for community God is love like we're created to love.
• 1:48:12
  We're not meant to be in isolation.
• 1:48:15
  A lot of awful things do happen to people in this world because
• 1:48:19
  it's mind, body and spirit. We, we, we 3 dimensional and we
• 1:48:24
  have to recognize that there are a lot of things that are
• 1:48:26
  happening that we can't see if the physical or we can't even
• 1:48:30
  give descriptors 2 or 4 to even try to make people understand
• 1:48:35
  what we may have experienced. But we all deserve it.
• 1:48:42
  We all deserve it. Yeah.
• 1:48:43
  So what's one shift that listeners can make immediately
• 1:48:48
  so that they can, how do I want to say it so that they can
• 1:48:55
  maintain desire, feed desire, keep the flame going, you know,
• 1:48:59
  create the safe space so that, you know, intimacy can be
• 1:49:05
  intimate. As a kid, talk, right?
• 1:49:08
  I like that. How do I want to OK, I'm going
• 1:49:12
  to talk this out. So the one thing it's so
• 1:49:17
  abstract, but I'm going to say it.
• 1:49:19
  The one thing I think is definitely around pleasure.
• 1:49:24
  And when I say, for the record, when I say pleasure, that
• 1:49:26
  doesn't necessarily mean sex, OK, like I can find my OK, I'm
• 1:49:32
  going to tell you this. I like a little sweet treat.
• 1:49:36
  I love me every every day I get a little sweet treat feels
• 1:49:40
  really good. I like eating my little sweet
• 1:49:42
  treat. So I tell folks and even, you
• 1:49:45
  know, to our folks that are listening, what is your daily
• 1:49:47
  pleasure? Especially for people that are
• 1:49:50
  like, I don't deserve pleasure or I should, you know, what is
• 1:49:53
  the daily thing, something that feels pleasurable to you?
• 1:49:55
  You don't have to defend it. You don't have to explain just
• 1:49:58
  what is the thing and get I would say do something
• 1:50:02
  pleasurable every day and like be tapped in, as tapped in as
• 1:50:06
  you can be when you do it like like get really.
• 1:50:10
  It's like notice how your body feels when you're doing whatever
• 1:50:13
  that pleasurable thing. Like what about it is making it
• 1:50:16
  feel pleasurable? Is it the taste?
• 1:50:18
  Is it the texture? Is it the sound?
• 1:50:21
  Like is it a sensation? Like why is this thing?
• 1:50:25
  Is it the thought is like a state of being like what a
• 1:50:29
  pleasurable like you know you like it like why?
• 1:50:33
  Like get really curious about the why.
• 1:50:36
  If you have a partner, share it with them.
• 1:50:38
  Just tell them like, you know, my daily pleasure for the day.
• 1:50:44
  Bring it my daily pleasure for the day.
• 1:50:46
  Like I just noticed the wind hit me just right.
• 1:50:49
  It went, you know, when I hit the little breeze and I just
• 1:50:51
  love feeling the air on my face. Like my pleasure for the day was
• 1:50:55
  I was walking the dog and I felt that and I said that feels
• 1:50:57
  really nice. You can just share it.
• 1:51:00
  Now. What y'all want to do with that?
• 1:51:01
  How you want to build from that? I'm going to leave grown folks
• 1:51:04
  to be grown. But your body is wired for
• 1:51:07
  pleasure and there are things that are happening.
• 1:51:10
  We start engaging our sisters where you're like that's all
• 1:51:12
  kind of good. And I mean this is not even a
• 1:51:14
  sexual like outside of a sexual way.
• 1:51:17
  Now you could build on those pleasures and bring those into
• 1:51:20
  sexual context. But the one starting point, I
• 1:51:24
  would say just just making your mission every day, I'm going to
• 1:51:27
  do 1 thing that is pleasurable and we gonna build on that.
• 1:51:35
  OK, awesome. So would you be willing to
• 1:51:40
  process with me one of these letters that has been sent in?
• 1:51:44
  Oh my God. Yeah, I just thought about it.
• 1:51:46
  I was like, oh wait, we could do this together.
• 1:51:50
  I love that we love a listener letter.
• 1:51:52
  Let's go. OK, let's see.
• 1:51:56
  Trying to see if any of these. OK.
• 1:51:58
  OK, so this one says this is anonymous.
• 1:52:01
  Excuse me, this is anonymous and it was sent in by a woman.
• 1:52:05
  Dear Doctor J, I've been talking to this guy for almost 6 months.
• 1:52:09
  We've never officially gone on a date, but we talk almost every
• 1:52:12
  day. He watches all of my stories,
• 1:52:15
  checks in late at night since thinking of you text, and gets
• 1:52:19
  jealous if I mention other men. But every time I ask where this
• 1:52:25
  is going he says he's taking things slow or that he doesn't
• 1:52:30
  want or to put any labels on it. Right now I'm feeling
• 1:52:34
  emotionally invested but also embarrassed because technically
• 1:52:38
  nothing is happening. Am I overthinking this or am I
• 1:52:43
  wasting my time? There's a lot going on.
• 1:52:46
  There's a lot going on, I mean, they say.
• 1:52:47
  Not. Exactly exactly, exactly because
• 1:52:52
  something is happening you're back to you said that wiring
• 1:52:55
  like there's a consistent pattern here of like these
• 1:52:58
  checking in notification. I respond to notes.
• 1:53:01
  So there is a you know, we're not labeling it.
• 1:53:06
  They're not like there's no label but we they're they're in
• 1:53:09
  a dynamic so that has that has happened.
• 1:53:12
  Sounds like it's the person I wrote it sounds like this isn't
• 1:53:15
  what they want. This ain't what they doesn't
• 1:53:17
  feel good. It sounds like they're this
• 1:53:19
  isn't doesn't, it's not giving secure.
• 1:53:22
  It's not. Not giving secure.
• 1:53:25
  What was that last sentence I said?
• 1:53:26
  Am I overthinking or what was the last time they said?
• 1:53:29
  Am I overthinking this or am I wasting my time?
• 1:53:34
  So I'll tell you this, I'm going to try to reframe this.
• 1:53:39
  It may not be a time waste. It depends on what you do with
• 1:53:42
  this with the. Data.
• 1:53:44
  Yeah, What you want that data exactly?
• 1:53:46
  Because we, I think the reason the person wrote the letter, so
• 1:53:50
  they know some something is off. So I think, you know, that's a
• 1:53:53
  good position. The part of that feels
• 1:53:55
  embarrassed, like that's real. Like I can, I understand why
• 1:53:58
  this might feel embarrassing. And you know, like I always
• 1:54:03
  appreciate when people can note like the different ways they
• 1:54:06
  feel about something. I would encourage this person
• 1:54:08
  not to let the embarrassment keep them in silence or
• 1:54:11
  isolation. You know, like I wonder if
• 1:54:14
  there's anyone else, Like if they have a therapist they're
• 1:54:16
  talking to, is this, are they too embarrassed to talk about
• 1:54:19
  this in therapy? If you're too embarrassed to
• 1:54:20
  talk about it in therapy, then that might be a misfit with your
• 1:54:22
  therapist. Is that even a supportive person
• 1:54:24
  that can help you with this? If you're not feeling this, this
• 1:54:29
  message person, you might need to cut that.
• 1:54:31
  I'm saying it might be so polite, but girl, you got to cut
• 1:54:33
  it off. You got to, you got to cut it
• 1:54:35
  off. Look at this doesn't feel good
• 1:54:36
  for you. You don't like it and you
• 1:54:38
  probably are overthinking to a degree because you're probably
• 1:54:40
  feeling anxious because you're not getting what you want out of
• 1:54:42
  this. So it's like, yeah, cut, shut
• 1:54:44
  this down. You know, this is a good
• 1:54:45
  opportunity to practice some assertive communication.
• 1:54:48
  This has been really great. This is no longer serving me
• 1:54:50
  like or however you want to frame it.
• 1:54:52
  I'm not, you know, this isn't what I want to do with my time.
• 1:54:56
  No, no shade, no whatever. I just told someone the other
• 1:54:59
  day, you gotta block that person.
• 1:55:00
  They're like, why did I block? They didn't do anything wrong in
• 1:55:02
  the if you're wanting to position yourself to get the
• 1:55:07
  kind of relationship where I'm reading in between the lines a
• 1:55:09
  bit, but it's not that. So I think you want someone
• 1:55:11
  that's gonna kind of move these things along.
• 1:55:14
  You're trying to get into some kind of a commitment.
• 1:55:16
  You want want some you want to. I think one of the things that
• 1:55:19
  we haven't done anything yet, so we're not going on dates.
• 1:55:21
  You want to go on dates or something?
• 1:55:22
  Yeah, you got it. We got to shut.
• 1:55:24
  You can't be open for things that you don't want and then
• 1:55:27
  still thinking that you're going to get the thing you want.
• 1:55:29
  Like how does the thing you want know you want it when you're
• 1:55:31
  tied up with the thing you don't want?
• 1:55:32
  So end up end off. I know I'm coming out.
• 1:55:36
  That was. Good though, like.
• 1:55:38
  I'm going, I'm embarrassed. I'm not trying to like be too
• 1:55:41
  harsh, but you got to end the thing like you can't.
• 1:55:44
  If you're trying to move towards relationship and commitment,
• 1:55:46
  then you cannot be moving in the other direct like you got to end
• 1:55:50
  that. But I mean, yeah, you probably
• 1:55:51
  are. You probably are overthinking
• 1:55:53
  because The thing is, this is the situation's probably got you
• 1:55:55
  anxious, but I think, you know, I wouldn't stop thinking about
• 1:55:59
  it, but I would stop engaging with that person.
• 1:56:00
  And then I like what you said earlier in the podcast today
• 1:56:03
  where you're talking about kind of that reflection and thinking
• 1:56:05
  about what you're going to do differently and not from a space
• 1:56:07
  of being hard on yourself. And you certainly don't get
• 1:56:10
  bitter. Like don't don't think every
• 1:56:12
  experience is going to be like this or every guy is like this
• 1:56:14
  guy. Every guy is not like that guy.
• 1:56:15
  Like, you know, and if you're meeting guys that are giving you
• 1:56:18
  the wishy washy, I don't know what I want or I don't this,
• 1:56:20
  then let that be your red flag. And we're looking for green
• 1:56:24
  flags. You're looking for get about
• 1:56:26
  them. DMS don't get that man out your
• 1:56:28
  MDM It was Adm close the DMS to that man close.
• 1:56:33
  I know it's going to suck. It probably hurts.
• 1:56:35
  That's OK. Like don't stay in a bad
• 1:56:37
  situation because you don't want to feel how bad it's going to
• 1:56:40
  let it go like it's going to suck.
• 1:56:43
  Give yourself the space to grieve.
• 1:56:44
  You get to grieve. Even if this if even if this
• 1:56:46
  person didn't validate this as a certified relationship, you
• 1:56:50
  still can grieve the loss of this connection and pray, give
• 1:56:54
  it up to God and keep the keep the line open for somebody
• 1:56:57
  that's worth it. No shade to that man because I
• 1:56:59
  don't know that man, but he ain't doing right.
• 1:57:02
  In the last six months, like 6 months is way too long and to
• 1:57:06
  have not been on a date. So what I'm hearing, yes, So
• 1:57:11
  this is somebody who you you have regular consistent
• 1:57:15
  communication with them. So this is given an illusion of
• 1:57:20
  relationship and creating like a false sense of intimacy because
• 1:57:23
  there is a level of consistency and it sounds like this is a
• 1:57:27
  person who they're seeking a version of emotional safety to
• 1:57:32
  know that you're there. They are wanting to know that
• 1:57:36
  they still have access. I think there could also be some
• 1:57:38
  ego in here that oh, I still got her.
• 1:57:41
  She's always going to be there. And because you've been going
• 1:57:45
  along to get along and not, I would assume this is what I'm I
• 1:57:49
  hear like with the type of personality, like the behavior
• 1:57:52
  with the behavior is telling me this is someone who's waiting to
• 1:57:56
  be chosen and they like the person.
• 1:57:59
  And I would imagine the person has done things to make you feel
• 1:58:03
  connected because you're not just going to spend 6 months
• 1:58:05
  just to spend 6 months And you're this goes to what we've
• 1:58:10
  been speaking about earlier and how like what types of beliefs
• 1:58:17
  shape relationships and what you believe about them.
• 1:58:20
  So this could be someone who maybe is operating more
• 1:58:24
  traditional and that the man has to make the first move.
• 1:58:28
  Also, you determine who has access and what access and how.
• 1:58:35
  And this is not someone based on the data.
• 1:58:37
  Six months. Like yes, y'all are checking in
• 1:58:40
  every day in the morning and the evening, but he's not spending
• 1:58:44
  real quality time with you face to face.
• 1:58:46
  If somebody is really and truly interested in you.
• 1:58:49
  And unless y'all are in a long distance type of thing or
• 1:58:52
  something, y'all met somewhere else and you know, life is just
• 1:58:55
  kind of hard to line up. But excuse me y'all in the same
• 1:59:00
  area and I've been on a date. This is where you need to say
• 1:59:05
  you've fought back or you might even say we've been doing this
• 1:59:09
  texting thing for a minute like or just take it as it is.
• 1:59:12
  Y'all just friends, nothing else because unless somewhere because
• 1:59:17
  we don't know everything, we're just going off what was what's
• 1:59:20
  been told by 6 months, which is 1 know about this man and and it
• 1:59:27
  doesn't mean he's a bad man or a bad person, but like you
• 1:59:32
  probably are overly invested because of the illusion of the
• 1:59:38
  relationship, the commitment because there is consistency.
• 1:59:40
  And I would wonder about the attachment style of our
• 1:59:44
  anonymous writer here where because this is kind of
• 1:59:48
  breadcrumbing. If I just send her a couple
• 1:59:51
  texts a day, I got her, you know what I mean?
• 1:59:54
  She's always going to be there. So then should I need to pull
• 1:59:57
  her off the out of the reserves, she's there, she's primed, she's
• 2:00:01
  ready. So this, unless this person got
• 2:00:04
  something else going on that's extenuating, this doesn't sound
• 2:00:08
  healthy. I agree with you, Jazz.
• 2:00:10
  It's not going the way you want it to go.
• 2:00:13
  And sometimes you have to tell people like, hey, I really been
• 2:00:16
  enjoying getting to know you and time is valuable.
• 2:00:22
  The emotion and emotional investment is invaluable.
• 2:00:25
  And I just want to see if we're on the same page and one in the
• 2:00:27
  same thing. So you still haven't said what
• 2:00:31
  is this? You're giving them an
• 2:00:33
  opportunity to tell you exactly what it is.
• 2:00:37
  What is it that you're looking for right now?
• 2:00:39
  And if it doesn't align, we have to be grown to be like, you know
• 2:00:43
  what, I really have enjoyed getting to know you, but it
• 2:00:45
  sounds like we want very different things and we can be
• 2:00:48
  cool. It's not like you're going to
• 2:00:51
  run into them on the street because.
• 2:00:53
  You. Stop seeing them now I'm.
• 2:00:55
  Just saying. I mean, you're not wrong though.
• 2:00:57
  I mean, I said it's in the and. Then we don't know how they met.
• 2:01:00
  We don't know how we. Don't know with the information
• 2:01:02
  I have, with the limited information we have, I would say
• 2:01:05
  send the message and, and, and keep it moving because the thing
• 2:01:08
  that a few things you said stood out to me.
• 2:01:10
  But it sounds like the person said the letter has asked.
• 2:01:13
  Maybe not in the most direct way or maybe the most assertive way,
• 2:01:15
  but it sounds like they've been asking kind of like what?
• 2:01:18
  What? Like what are we?
• 2:01:19
  And I, I'll tell you this is what I'll be telling my home.
• 2:01:24
  Girls, don't give a man more than one opportunity to tell you
• 2:01:27
  he don't want you. Don't like, don't.
• 2:01:29
  Say that again. Fill the people in the back.
• 2:01:31
  I'm speaking to my girls. I'm sure.
• 2:01:33
  I'm sure there's another side to this, but do not let that man
• 2:01:37
  don't give him more than one opportunity.
• 2:01:38
  Like hear him clearly the first time.
• 2:01:40
  If he says something and it don't sound clear, you kind of
• 2:01:43
  confuse you need an unclear answer is a clear answer.
• 2:01:48
  The person that wants you is going to it's going to be clear.
• 2:01:52
  It's no, it's no if fans or if, if, if you if, if that's if
• 2:01:57
  that's what you, you know, like you know, you're not like if
• 2:02:00
  you're if you're I'm going to keep it with the because the the
• 2:02:03
  person with the letter is is a woman.
• 2:02:05
  If in this, you know, she's attracted in dating men, man,
• 2:02:11
  you ain't got to go and have to come and run and find him.
• 2:02:12
  He's going to be coming and running and finding you like so
• 2:02:15
  that's why I'm saying you got to cut off things with this guy
• 2:02:17
  because it does seem like things are a bit out of order.
• 2:02:20
  Like she's in some ways it sounds like pursuing the things
• 2:02:24
  with him and it doesn't sound like balance or it doesn't even
• 2:02:27
  sound, I mean, I guess I'll say unbalanced, but I'm balancing
• 2:02:30
  the way that he's pursuing her. Like it just it doesn't.
• 2:02:32
  That's why I said it doesn't sound this is going the way she
• 2:02:34
  wants it. So I would six months and we
• 2:02:39
  still are. You know, it's okay to move at
• 2:02:41
  the very least move around. Like I don't know, is this the
• 2:02:43
  only person you're is this the only person you're dating?
• 2:02:46
  Are you are you given? Have you decided to be
• 2:02:50
  monogamous to the something that's like a non relationship,
• 2:02:54
  like it's a relationship. That's why I said it's like I
• 2:02:56
  said, it's a dynamic, but we haven't even had you know,
• 2:03:00
  there's no what is the relationship agreement?
• 2:03:02
  Like we're DM ING. We're not going on dates and
• 2:03:04
  it's been. It says texting.
• 2:03:07
  Excuse me, we're texting. I think I said let me read it
• 2:03:09
  again but I thought it was texting.
• 2:03:12
  We not Facetiming. We don't.
• 2:03:14
  And they watch all her stories. So they clock in here sending
• 2:03:19
  good morning, good evening. Or, you know, have a nice
• 2:03:22
  evening. You know those.
• 2:03:24
  Hey, behead. I don't know.
• 2:03:25
  So they're observing you. They like you.
• 2:03:29
  That's my thing. But they don't like you enough.
• 2:03:32
  No, and I mean this would love anonymous writer.
• 2:03:35
  Are you in? Are you getting something from
• 2:03:37
  him looking at your stuff like do you like that does that?
• 2:03:39
  Is that reinforcing this? Is this for you?
• 2:03:41
  Is it making it hard? Are you telling yourself that
• 2:03:43
  he, you know, he wants to because he keeps checking your
• 2:03:45
  stuff because like dearly beloved, let that go.
• 2:03:50
  Like let that, let that go. We got to raise the bar.
• 2:03:53
  We got to raise, you know, watch my stories and let's go out on
• 2:03:57
  some dates. Like let's talk about our
• 2:03:59
  future. Let's see if we're aligned and
• 2:04:01
  our you got to be real with yourself about what do you
• 2:04:03
  really want? Like are you settling for the
• 2:04:05
  views? Are you settling for the text
• 2:04:07
  messages, but really wanting more?
• 2:04:09
  Are you trying to control him and make him pursue you or give
• 2:04:12
  you the things you want because you have to accept where he's at
• 2:04:15
  too. Like if he's he's in some ways
• 2:04:17
  has communicated that that's not what you're going to going to
• 2:04:19
  get from me. That's not what I'm interested
• 2:04:21
  in, at least not right now. And if you want that right now,
• 2:04:23
  then you got to make the big decision to like, let that go
• 2:04:26
  and it come with peace and accept that you can't make this
• 2:04:29
  person love you in the way you want to be loved.
• 2:04:31
  And if the way that they're showing care for you is not
• 2:04:34
  making you feel good, move around, move around and allow
• 2:04:38
  yourself to do that. You're it's OK for you to do
• 2:04:40
  that. If you're going to be the
• 2:04:41
  villain in his story, be the villain in his story and get him
• 2:04:44
  out of your stories because he don't need to be looking at your
• 2:04:46
  stuff. Block access from that person
• 2:04:49
  move around because we we, if talking about attachment, right?
• 2:04:53
  Like that is that is the, you know, I'm not going to be the, I
• 2:04:57
  could be the academic way, but now I'm going to get, I mean,
• 2:04:58
  get a. Say it in a say it in a home
• 2:05:01
  girl way if you can't. Secure attachment is move around
• 2:05:06
  like like that is secure attachment.
• 2:05:08
  Is this working? I'm not that ain't working.
• 2:05:10
  I'm securely moving until and then and then the beauty of
• 2:05:14
  secure is when you find the other person that is secure, now
• 2:05:16
  we can lock in. You don't have to move around
• 2:05:18
  because this is secure and this feels good.
• 2:05:20
  But hanging on to something that is not feeling secure and it's
• 2:05:24
  not feeling good, especially in this, we're not talking about
• 2:05:27
  people with kids. We're not talking about people
• 2:05:28
  with a mortgage. We're not talking about marriage
• 2:05:30
  for 30 years. You know, we're not talking
• 2:05:31
  about this is text messaging and Instagram.
• 2:05:36
  I don't want to say stalking, but maybe voyeur.
• 2:05:38
  Isn't monitoring, yeah. Monitoring clocking.
• 2:05:41
  Yeah. Wait, you move.
• 2:05:42
  Around. Yeah, yeah, because you're
• 2:05:47
  absolutely right. I do think this is a form of
• 2:05:49
  settling and this what would happen if you were to just
• 2:05:55
  reclaim your time, be a little less available.
• 2:05:58
  I think you'd find out a lot. So if you, because I don't know
• 2:06:02
  if you're holding the pattern because you're like, this keeps
• 2:06:04
  me connected to him, or if you're like, this is like a, I'm
• 2:06:08
  bored of this, you know what I mean?
• 2:06:10
  And if you just remove yourself because you don't owe this
• 2:06:13
  person anything. And what's like really being
• 2:06:15
  built and it makes me wonder about limerance.
• 2:06:18
  Is this a case of limerance and you're, you're holding on
• 2:06:22
  yourself, right? And you're just happy to be
• 2:06:25
  chosen in that limerance can be attached to or linked with
• 2:06:30
  attachment style. I'll say where that that shows
• 2:06:34
  up as those types of behaviors. And you're you're filling in the
• 2:06:37
  blank. And that's not even what reality
• 2:06:39
  is supporting at all. So I agree with Jazz.
• 2:06:45
  Let it go, pull back. It wouldn't surprise me if you
• 2:06:47
  think he's pulling up on you because you've been too
• 2:06:50
  available. And so some people, they don't
• 2:06:53
  want to pull back for fear of playing games.
• 2:06:55
  But sometimes that pull back is going to show you what you do
• 2:07:00
  have or what you don't have. But either your way, you'll have
• 2:07:04
  the facts and you will know. So if I'm no longer available to
• 2:07:08
  just say good morning, good evening and he watch my stories.
• 2:07:12
  If he fades, well then there you go.
• 2:07:16
  If he steps up, OK, right. So just like remember that.
• 2:07:20
  But I think people will continue to be overly available, hoping
• 2:07:24
  that that availability, that's that earning love that's more
• 2:07:28
  insecure, more anxious attachment.
• 2:07:32
  If you don't give a chance to a chance to breathe sometimes,
• 2:07:35
  then you don't know, especially when it's not as substantial.
• 2:07:39
  Y'all are texting, they're story watching.
• 2:07:47
  That's not a real relationship. That's an illusion because of
• 2:07:51
  the time. And I think time is one of those
• 2:07:53
  greatest illusions that impact sometimes people not making the
• 2:07:59
  best health or the healthiest relationship decisions because
• 2:08:05
  that's six months that he's been showing you how he is.
• 2:08:09
  But of course we only have the surface.
• 2:08:12
  Totally, totally. I guess the last thing I'll say
• 2:08:14
  about it when you mentioned time they did they mentioned the the
• 2:08:18
  piece of them that's thinking am I overthinking this?
• 2:08:21
  Am I thinking too much? And I do wonder if that if the
• 2:08:23
  thought if that is connected to time at all, so that to that
• 2:08:27
  reframing of like, it's not a waste of time.
• 2:08:30
  Like this is not this. There's a lesson in here for
• 2:08:32
  you. There's a nugget.
• 2:08:33
  And I am saying stop it, like stop the bleed.
• 2:08:36
  Like this is not helping you. So stop that.
• 2:08:40
  Break the connection. You did not waste your time.
• 2:08:43
  There's something in this in there's something in this for
• 2:08:47
  you and that is for you to figure out.
• 2:08:49
  But it you didn't like the situation, maybe didn't, it
• 2:08:55
  isn't going the way you hoped it would go the way you want it to
• 2:08:58
  go. You went through this or
• 2:09:00
  something. And to your point, you mentioned
• 2:09:01
  earlier, Doctor Nicole is like, you could go through cycles.
• 2:09:06
  And so like this person may be presented with this.
• 2:09:08
  Again, this may not be the first time this person's been in this
• 2:09:10
  kind of situation and it may not be the last.
• 2:09:12
  So really thinking the next time you meet this kind of situation,
• 2:09:16
  how do you want to do it differently?
• 2:09:17
  Well, do you? Yeah, that's good.
• 2:09:19
  Yeah, but like not, not bitter. We're not going bitter, we're
• 2:09:22
  not going to stream. You're not going angry, but
• 2:09:24
  you're going informed, you're going prepared.
• 2:09:27
  You're going like aware of what you need, the ability to express
• 2:09:32
  it. So even my my suggestion of
• 2:09:34
  sending a message to this person, letting them know that
• 2:09:36
  you have entered, you have exited the chat, it's not to be
• 2:09:39
  petty and it's not to argue. It is to really practice,
• 2:09:42
  practice that form of communication when something
• 2:09:43
  isn't going right for you, you can express that like you can
• 2:09:46
  express, I'm longer interested in this and I'm going to, you
• 2:09:49
  know, I would like to like take take a step away from this.
• 2:09:53
  You don't have to defend it. You don't have to go back and
• 2:09:55
  forth like you can honestly send your message.
• 2:09:58
  I don't want to do this anymore in that and say, you know, next
• 2:10:03
  time when I need to express myself, maybe I'll do it earlier
• 2:10:07
  and see what happens. Like before this thing is like
• 2:10:08
  over over, if that makes sense. So I'm always looking for word,
• 2:10:13
  you know, wasn't these experiences because you're
• 2:10:15
  you're the writer of that letter.
• 2:10:18
  This is your first time on Earth.
• 2:10:20
  This is your first time having this human experience.
• 2:10:22
  So. You're with that person.
• 2:10:24
  And with that person, right, So you are learning some the
• 2:10:28
  message. A lot of times the message and
• 2:10:30
  the lesson isn't clear until you reflect on it.
• 2:10:32
  You got to get out of it. And then you look back and you
• 2:10:34
  say, oh, that's why I was talking, texting that guy for
• 2:10:37
  six months. And that's why I was, you know,
• 2:10:40
  posting them stories and things because a little part of me
• 2:10:42
  wanted him to see the story like, and that's OK.
• 2:10:45
  Like, that is a part of that. That could be a part of it, but
• 2:10:48
  I would. Yeah.
• 2:10:49
  You're not. This is not a time waste.
• 2:10:50
  This is not a thing. I get the embarrassment, but
• 2:10:53
  don't let the embarrassment isolate you.
• 2:10:55
  Don't let them. Don't let the embarrassment push
• 2:10:57
  you closer to the guy. Please don't do that.
• 2:10:59
  Like, all right, that's it. That's.
• 2:11:01
  I know. Yeah, that's good.
• 2:11:04
  That's good. Clearly we could go on and on,
• 2:11:06
  but there's we don't know enough about this story.
• 2:11:10
  But it does sound like that this is not someone that's moving
• 2:11:12
  with intention, right? And that they're giving you
• 2:11:16
  attention and you deserve far more.
• 2:11:20
  You need attention and intention.
• 2:11:22
  And six months is not giving intentionality.
• 2:11:26
  And you have so much life to live, like it's your life, your
• 2:11:31
  ruse, your business, and reclaim your time.
• 2:11:37
  Well, thank you for writing in, whoever you are.
• 2:11:41
  Thank you that do send those and those will be welcomed.
• 2:11:45
  I have a feeling that this is going to go well beyond
• 2:11:48
  February. I think this is a great way for
• 2:11:51
  people to write in and get some opinion from people with lived
• 2:11:55
  experience. Some of it is also like
• 2:11:57
  professional as well. Do you know why is counsel is
• 2:12:03
  important in dating? And six months is more than
• 2:12:06
  enough time for someone to know how they feel about you.
• 2:12:10
  And if you're still unclear, that is your answer.
• 2:12:14
  Now, if you haven't asked the question, it's OK to ask the
• 2:12:18
  question. But I think you already have an
• 2:12:20
  answer. And I love what you said to Jazz
• 2:12:26
  about the we use the data. We learn from every single one
• 2:12:32
  of these experiences. And if we only allow ourselves
• 2:12:35
  to be the victim, we do ourselves a disservice.
• 2:12:40
  And we can run the risk of repeating those same unhealthy
• 2:12:43
  patterns over and over and over again.
• 2:12:47
  And that's how some people end up with a type when really
• 2:12:53
  sometimes we're recreating our own trauma.
• 2:12:55
  And that's a whole other episode with repetition, compulsion and
• 2:12:58
  relationships. OK, so, so finally wrap us up.
• 2:13:03
  Oh, and if you want to send in your letters, do send them to
• 2:13:06
  info at Evolve with Doctor J nicole.com.
• 2:13:09
  OK, we'll be accepting those there.
• 2:13:11
  I guess if you got to send them through the DMS, I'll take them
• 2:13:14
  wherever y'all send them because I'm on all the platforms.
• 2:13:17
  Or if you want to leave your note in the comments down here,
• 2:13:20
  this is fine too. We're checking the comments and
• 2:13:23
  want to make sure we reply back to you so that you can get some
• 2:13:28
  some sound solid feedback. So, Jazz, just to wrap us up, if
• 2:13:32
  you could leave our audience with one powerful truth to help
• 2:13:36
  them to rise and thrive, what would it be?
• 2:13:41
  One powerful truth. OK.
• 2:13:44
  So earlier we talked about, I was talking about scripts and
• 2:13:48
  how sometimes these scripts shape like identity, sometimes
• 2:13:53
  they're influenced by race. And, you know, there's a variety
• 2:13:57
  of things that go into that. And they're placed on us to
• 2:14:00
  like, talk about messages. So messages you might get from
• 2:14:03
  your friends or from religious leaders or other people in the
• 2:14:07
  community, all these external things kind of tell us how we're
• 2:14:10
  supposed to be. So my powerful truth is that you
• 2:14:15
  have the power to define your own erotic self.
• 2:14:21
  Like what makes you feel? What do you find good?
• 2:14:24
  What do you find pleasurable? What feels empowering for you,
• 2:14:27
  like you, You get to define that for yourself.
• 2:14:31
  That doesn't have to come from any external force.
• 2:14:35
  It's all you. All roads lead back to you.
• 2:14:37
  I think last time I said you matter.
• 2:14:38
  This time it's like you get to define your your erotic self.
• 2:14:43
  Don't let, don't, don't let anyone else take that from you.
• 2:14:47
  All right, you heard it here. It all comes back to you.
• 2:14:51
  So really and truly an intimate relationship with self,
• 2:14:55
  understanding your values, your value, self respect, confidence,
• 2:15:02
  what you want, knowing what matters to you and being
• 2:15:05
  authentic to that seems like really and truly that that's
• 2:15:09
  that's the key to having the ultimate intimate relationship.
• 2:15:15
  All right, audience, yes, yes. Well, thank you again for being
• 2:15:22
  here. It's always a great time
• 2:15:24
  whenever you and I talk in general.
• 2:15:26
  So I'm glad to be able to have you back here again to talk
• 2:15:29
  about this and maybe get in the future, who knows?
• 2:15:32
  Who knows? This always.
• 2:15:34
  Yes, and if y'all want to see future Dr. N Cross back here
• 2:15:38
  again. Let us.
• 2:15:40
  Know, and if you got questions for her, I mean, that's the
• 2:15:42
  perfect reason to have her come back, even if it's just for a
• 2:15:45
  moment, a segment. We can absolutely do that.
• 2:15:48
  But this is where we're going to ship to you.
• 2:15:51
  We want you to reflect where in my life am I operating in
• 2:15:55
  survival mode? How, how have stress and
• 2:15:59
  responsibility reshape my relationship with desire and am
• 2:16:04
  I treating my body as a problem or as a source of information
• 2:16:10
  and then take action. So you're going to identify one
• 2:16:13
  small stressor that you can soften or eliminate this month.
• 2:16:17
  Then we want you to create a moment of embodied rest where
• 2:16:21
  there's no productivity attached to where you just get to be be
• 2:16:26
  present. And we want to replace any of
• 2:16:28
  that self doubt or questioning of what?
• 2:16:31
  Like what's wrong with me with what is my body responding to?
• 2:16:37
  So we want to bring together that body awareness with
• 2:16:41
  emotions and what's happening and connecting it to your lived
• 2:16:44
  experiences so that you are connected with you and you
• 2:16:48
  understand the experience that's happening.
• 2:16:51
  And so for your affirmation, my body is wise, my desire adapts
• 2:16:56
  to protect me. I choose compassion, rest and
• 2:17:00
  safety as pathways back to connection or as Jazz said, back
• 2:17:05
  to you. All real sweet.
• 2:17:07
  Back to you. Thank you for joining again for
• 2:17:09
  another episode of Riser Driver. Doctor J Nicole.
• 2:17:12
  Special thank you again to Jazz Lampert joining us here and
• 2:17:17
  sending your letters. We want to hear from you.
• 2:17:19
  Make sure you shop the merch. Go to
• 2:17:22
  www.evolvewithdoctorjnicole.com. Go to the podcast, click shop
• 2:17:29
  the merch. We have all the things that you
• 2:17:31
  can need. Here's some things that you want
• 2:17:33
  to see. Merch, types of merch.
• 2:17:35
  Let me know. We could definitely make that
• 2:17:36
  happen. So keep rising in faith and keep
• 2:17:38
  thriving a purpose and we will see you next week.
• 2:17:42
  See you next time.